


We Love Camp Campbell

by feelsnotfeelings



Series: We Love Camp Campbell [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (shittily done), Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Beekeeper Castiel, Bottom Dean, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2015, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pining Castiel, Pining Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:32:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 44,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5188823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feelsnotfeelings/pseuds/feelsnotfeelings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester arrives at Camp Campbell baggage in tow. Freshly dumped and fresh out of rehab, a summer romance is the last thing he needs. Until he meets Castiel Novak.</p><p>Featuring: bonfires, movie marathons, nosy coworkers, brotherly bonding, and Jody forcibly pulling Dean’s head out of his ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A million gazillion thank yous to the most patient beta on earth, [fictionalguysarethebest](http://fictionalguysarethebest.tumblr.com) for putting up with me throughout this whole process, and for reading my shit when I couldn't even look at it. 
> 
> Another million gazillion thanks to [emmatheslayer](http://emmatheslayer.livejournal.com) for the [hella rad art](http://emmatheslayer.livejournal.com/261739.html).
> 
> And finally, shoutouts to [mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com) and [tenoko1](http://tenoko1.tumblr.com) for the support and encouragement they probably don't even know they gave me. Thank you.

 

 

“Really, Sam, a summer camp? Not exactly my kind of place,” Dean says, dragging a hand down his face. He turns his back on his roommate, who is unsubtly eavesdropping from the doorway.

“Where you are isn’t exactly your kind of place either. Besides, you’re done in like a day, and you have no plan. What are you gonna do, motel-hop back to Lawrence?”

“That was the idea.” Though exactly how welcome he’d be there he has no idea. And it’s not like he could slink back to Battle Creek with his tail between his legs, only to have the door slammed in his face.

“Dude, it’s only for a summer, help you get your bearings and then you can be on your way. Jo’ll be there, just like old times. Except you'll have your own room,” Sam promises, sing-song.

"I'm not twelve, dude," he says, but considers the offer, shifting his weight and staring around the room. Standard-issue dressers separate standard-issue single beds, his neatly made. Two blocky desks hulk across from them, and there are tracks in the cheap laminate flooring from years of scooting chairs.

Sam’s right, this isn’t his kind of place, with its institutional stench and mandatory talk-about-our-feelings sessions. He’d found his kind of place once— or thought he had— but he’d fucked _that_ dry.

It would be awesome to see Jo again, though. _What the hell_ , he thought, _fresh air might do some good_.

“No roomie?” he says, shooting a glare at Alistair. “I’m sold.”

***

A day later, give or take, Dean obeys the white arrow that directs him to turn onto Sycamore Ave. The road looks like it hasn’t been used since last summer, branches spilling over onto the roadway, and Dean dares the hardier ones to scratch his baby’s finish.

They’d never gone to summer camp growing up. The closest they ever got was when John would drop them off at Ellen’s for a couple weeks, or months, or however long he felt like, and Dean still can't believe Sam put his law career on hold to start one (in South Da-freaking-kota, no less). He figures it’s that feeling people get about things they’d always wanted to do but the time for them had passed, something like nostalgia but not quite.

A painted sign on the right warns _Camp Campbell 1 Mile_. A few minutes later he turns onto a gravel drive, crossing under an honest-to-god arch, like he’s just driven into _The Parent Trap_.

Sam emerges from a small building marked _Administration_ just as Dean is pulling in next to a mustard brown Continental. He pulls him out of the car and into a hug, Baby still purring behind him.

“Man is it good to see you,” he says, giving him one final squeeze before releasing him. “I have to take care of a few errands, wanna run me into town?”

“Dude, I just got here. From _Michigan_. Feels like I’ve been driving for weeks.”

“You left this morning,” Sam deadpans. “Mind if I take the Metallicar, then?”

Dean knows he’s teasing but bristles anyway. “Why don’t you take your pimpmobile?”

“Because it’s not mine, and its owner is currently unreachable.”

“It’s owner?”

“Castiel. Rec director. He went for a hike and didn’t take his phone.”

His brother doesn’t wait for permission before sliding into the driver’s seat, and Dean catches the door before it closes.

He jabs a finger in Sam’s direction. “Only if you promise to respect your elders and never call her that again. And you can unload my stuff when you get back.”

“Deal.”

Dean closes the door carefully, and as Sam drives away he calls out, “I missed the Metallicar!”

***

Dean has nothing to unpack, so he takes his time exploring. The administration building is tiny, with only two doors off the reception area, a nurse’s office and Sam’s office, judging by the plaques. He tries the door marked _Director_ and finds it open. Framed pictures hang behind the desk, each showing a group of about sixty kids, Sam towering treelink behind them, a few counselors, and the support staff. He recognizes one person other than Sam— Jo, her arms slung around the necks of a dark-haired man and a redhead, all beaming. It feels a little weird to be, well, not snooping in Sam’s office. Because he’s not. But this space is definitely Sam’s and Dean starts to feel like he’s intruding. He shuffles out carefully, shifting his weight from heel to toe as if the room were watching him, taking note of his every movement.

He pass the old farmhouse that sits behind the building, two lines of cabins stretching away from it like arms. As Dean approaches the building marked _Mess_ , a man steps out of the woods. He’s dressed half in some beekeeper getup— white jumpsuit tied around his waist, hat and netting hiding his face— and half in an acid-green t-shirt that boasts I SURVIVED THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE.

Yeah, I bet you did, buddy. It occurs to him that this must be Castiel, owner of the Pimpmobile. Dean wishes he were surprised.

Castiel removes the headgear and tucks it under one arm, shaking out his dark hair. It’s the guy from the pictures, which— _shit_ — did not do him justice. The shirt glows against the beginning of a tan at his collar and somehow accentuates the already intense blue of his eyes.

“Hello Dean,” he says with a voice like an idling engine. He doesn’t hold out a hand to shake, and it throws Dean a little.

“Have we met?” _Because I think I’d remember you_.

He glances down at himself as if in apology. “Forgive me. I’m Castiel— Cas. Your brother informed me that you’d be arriving today.”

“Right… rec director.” He nods. Dean wonders just how much Sam told the other staff members about him. He came here to get away from his _Hi, I’m Dean, recovering alcoholic_ status. Cas is staring at him again, not unfriendly, but a little too openly for his comfort.

He motions to the jumpsuit and headgear. “Where’d you stash your bumblebee, Cornelius?”

Cas squints. Or is it a glare?

“It’s Cas, and I... don’t…”

 _Awesome first impression, asshole_.

“No, I know. It’s from a— you know, nevermind. Sam said you were hiking, but that doesn’t look like hiking gear.”

“Uh, yes. I took the opportunity to tend to the hive.”

“Is that really safe? I mean, with all these kids running around.”

“It’s well hidden, don’t worry. I could show you, if that would make you more comfortable,” Cas offers, quirking a brow as he stares him down.

_Did he just..?_

He’s saved from that train of thought as the Impala’s tires grind over the gravel drive.

Dean licks his lips and sputters, “Uh, rain check? I have to, uh, unpack.”

Sam has his bags slung over his shoulders as Dean follows him through the farmhouse’s front door, Cas not far behind. The first floor is smaller than it looks from the outside, with only a small kitchen and a shabby living room separated by a narrow staircase that groans under their weight.

Cas slips into the first door to the left of the landing without a word. That must be normal behavior from him, as Sam doesn’t seem to notice.

He drops Dean’s bags in the hall.“You’re gonna be in the first room on the right. Missouri’s next to you, and then Jo’s across from her, and I’m upstairs.”

“‘Upstairs’ as in the attic? What, do you crawl to your bed every night?”

Sam shrugs. “No one else wanted it. Anyway, the quick and dirty house rules, as Jo likes to put it— ‘No booze, no butts, no bootycalls’.”

Dean nudges the bags into the nearest room and shuts the door in Sam’s face. Those rules hit a little too close to home, and Sam should’ve known that. After the mess with Lisa he doesn’t think he’ll be making any bootycalls anytime soon. And he’s, well, not _glad_ to be rid of booze— misses it like a drowning man misses oxygen— but he knows he’s better off without it.

He dumps out the first duffel onto the bed, sorting through neatly rolled clothing and double-wrapped toiletries before he gives up and just tosses things into drawers. It’ll sort itself out later.

He’s more careful with the next bag, unloading a stack of paperbacks and shuffling through them like a roll-call: Vonnegut, LeGuin, Bradbury, Adams. He sets them gently on the bedside table before pulling out handkerchief-wrapped picture frames. He unwraps them and lines them up on top of the dresser before removing the smallest and wadding the empty bag around it. He shoves it into the back corner of the bottom drawer and hopes to forget about it for seven weeks.


	2. Chapter 2

The redhead, Charlie, has not stopped yakking since they set up shop almost an hour ago.

“Did I mention how happy I am to be done with this semester? Kicked me right in the wrists, I swear I’m not typing a _thing_ until August.”

Dean finishes checking in a boy with an unfortunate bowl cut and hands him a card to take to the next table before turning an incredulous look to Charlie.

“What are you talking about? You’ve been texting every spare minute since we’ve been standing here.”

She shrugs. “Gotta keep my girl happy. Besides, thumb-swiping hardly counts as typing.”

At that moment a small curly-haired girl comes running up to the table, bypassing the line completely, to wrap her arms and legs around Charlie.

“Speaking of my girls! Omg you got tall! Let’s see if you’re bunking with me this year.” She leans across Dean to sift through his stack of cards. “Hmm… sorry, no Grangers, but there _is_ a Cassie.” They fist bump, and Charlie sends her off to get a welcome packet from Kevin. When there’s a break in the line Charlie waves hugely to get his attention. He returns it with a small smile.

“Poor Kev, he texted me last week that he and Channing broke up, pretty messy.”

Yeah, he can relate. Though kicking him out might count as a pretty clean break.

Charlie kicks him lightly in the shin, and he nearly curses before remembering that he’s surrounded by 10-year-olds. He apologizes as he combs through his stack to find the kid’s name.

“Dude, you ok?” Charlie asks, not quite looking at him.

“Great,” he says, straightening the dwindling stack of papers in front of him.

“I’m sensing bull-doody. If there’s only two things I got, it’s awesome gay-dar and awesome crap-dar, and _boy_ are you pinging.”

"Sure it's not your gay-dar going off? You did get the bi plugin, right?"

She snorts a laugh but leaves it at that, and Dean is grateful.

“I almost didn't even come this year, Moondoor is right in the middle of a session. I hope Garth can handle his queenly duties.” She pauses at Dean's utterly lost expression, explaining, “He's technically just a handmaiden, but he's the only one I really trust to keep my Kingdom intact while I'm gone.”

“Yeah, none of that means anything to me.”

Charlie gives away her last card and turns to him.

“You like Tolkien?”

He nods.

“Imagine if you could live in Middle Earth, fight in battles, all that epic stuff. Would you?”

He doesn't even need to think about it.

“Abso-freaking-lutely.”

Charlie looks smug. “Well, a couple weekends a month I get to do that.”

“And you're the Queen. Of all of it?”

She nods.

_Badass._

***

That night after every table has been laid out with food, Jo drags Dean over to the staff table and pushes him into the empty chair next to Sam before settling into her own near Missouri.

Dean grabs a roll and a heaping pile of spaghetti, hoping he can keep his mouth full enough that he won’t have to talk much.

“You’re a good cook, Dean,” Cas says from Sam’s right.

“Jo’s better, but thanks. You know, she said she’d go easy on me the first day, but all she did was boil water.”

Jo punches Dean in the shoulder. “I heard that, Winchester.”

“But do you deny it?” he retorts around a mouthful of pasta.

She rolls her eyes and turns back to her dinner.

It’s quiet for a while as they all concentrate on shoving food into their mouths. Dean lets his eyes wander around the mess hall. He could’ve sworn there weren’t this many kids here earlier.

“So, first day, first impressions?” Sam asks.

“Sixty kids is a lot.” He looks to Sam’s right and catches Cas’s eye. “I do not envy you, man. How do you keep them all straight?”

Cas almost smiles and looks around the room before answering.

“I already know most of them, but the first couple of years saw the use of a very complex set of nicknames based on hair and shirt colors.”

He meant it to be a rhetorical question, but it was sound advice.

When everyone has finished eating and starts to grow restless, Sam stands and waits for the room to grow quiet.

“Hi everybody. As I’m sure a lot of the return campers will remember, I usually start things off by telling you about how I grew up and why starting this camp was so important to me. Anyway, our mom died when I was a baby, and our dad wasn’t really the best caregiver. My brother practically raised me—it was rough. He’s actually here helping Jo out in the kitchen this summer, and trust me, the meal we just had is a big improvement over boxed mac and hot dogs. Uh, it’s a little weird going through this with you sitting right there, man, so…” He huffs a breath and runs a hand through his hair. “My point is, we didn’t have a normal childhood, as I’m sure a lot of you can relate to. We’ve all lost someone. Growing up, my brother and I didn’t have a place where our experience was the norm. So I created one, and I hope you all enjoy being here as much as I do. Welcome to Camp Campbell.”

So that’s the story as Sammy tells it. _Jeez, if that’s what Sam says when he's here_ — Dean doesn’t want to finish that thought. He trusts that Sam means well, but to hear that he couldn’t give his brother the childhood he wanted...

So far this summer feels a lot like just throwing his shortcomings back in his face. _Welcome to Camp Campbell_   _his_ ass.

***

Everyone else has trooped off to their respective cabins and the mess is silent save the scraping of dishes as Jo and Dean clear tables.

The empty air is an invitation for all of Dean’s doubts from the past few days to crowd in and jeer at him.

_You did a crap job taking care of Sam._

Plates rattle.

_You’re here so he can babysit you._

Serving bowls grind together as he pushes them down like he can force them through the counter.

_Screw-up._

He doesn’t notice the fork sitting tines-up in the glass until he slams his hand over it hard enough to draw blood.

“Mother _fucker_!”

“What the hell, Winchester!”

When Jo sees what he’s done she pushes him over to the sink to wash out the wound. As she pours bleach solution over the fork she asks, “What’s your problem? Why are you stomping around picking fights with the flatware?”

He resoaps his hands and feigns concentration. “It was an accident.”

“ _Bullshit_.” Jo leans over the sink to catch his eye. “We grew up together. I know when you’re lying.”

Dean sighs and leans on his forearms against the counter. “So I’m a little frustrated. This hasn’t been the easiest transition.”

“Is this about Sam’s speech at dinner?”

He looks down at his reflection, vague and warped in the metal. She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, a near-tsk.

“You know, I had a feeling this would happen. Get your head out of your ass, Dean. He was _thanking_ you. He turned out awesome because of you. He opened this place because of you. To _be like you_. So every time you think he’s putting you down, that’s you doing it to yourself, just like with this fork.”

She jabs the fork at him, then lets it clatter to the bottom of the sink. Leaving him there to sulk, she turns the radio to some awful pop song that he hasn’t heard since the nineties. She has a point, though, about them having practically grown up together. She knows him about as well as Sam does, and the music helps. It’s hard to sulk, after all, with someone singing about good vibrations. The song ends, and he joins her at the dish tank, even managing to laugh as she proves that she does indeed still know all the words to “One Week.”

Still, he can’t quite shake the feeling that he’d shouldn’t be here.

Back in the staff cabin, he thinks about calling Jody, who, after a few rushed phone calls from Sam, agreed to step in as his sponsor while he’s here. He even gets as far as his contact list, but the half bar of service warns that it’ll be a short, staticky conversation. He’d have to call from the landline in the living room where anyone could walk by and hear him whining to his sponsor. Not that she’d care anyway, he’s only talked to her once in his life. All she has to do is help him keep from drinking (which he’s _completely_ at risk of here), not listen to him moan about his horrible time at sleep-away camp. It’s barely even started. What kind of wimp can’t make it through one day? He slaps the phone screen-down on the bedside table, not that it’ll make him feel any better. The tightness in his throat just won’t ease.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Dean thought he loved cooking until he made three meals for seventy people in one day. Even working with Jo, a considerably kinder boss than her mother, he’s glad this is his summer and not his career. His feet ache in a way they never did while working at the garage, and his fork punctures didn’t appreciate the press of knife handles against them. Jo might actually be insane, considering she wants to do this for the rest of her life.

He also thought he loved onions until the stench of them worked itself into his skin, his very own aura of junior-high B.O. He feels like his eyes will never _not_ water again.

He slings his robe and a towel over his arm and steps out of his room to see a cloud of steam emerge from the bathroom at the end of the hall, Cas in the center of it. His cheeks are flushed pink from the heat— his chest, too, judging by the hint of color peeking over his white v-neck. Water drips from his slightly overgrown hair, and it’s turned the back of his shirt transparent, a fact made obvious when he turns to flick on the exhaust fan. The dark lines of a tattoo bleed through the cotton, stretching across his shoulder blades to disappear under dry fabric. Dean’s gut clenches, and his spine pulls a little straighter. It barely registers when Cas scoots past him with an apology for using all the hot water.

The bathroom smells like Castiel’s soap, something between fresh linen and spices, most likely blue, and definitely called some bullshit like Sea Breeze. He inhales despite himself, and the breath seems to go down to his toes. It’s the kind of scent that actually smells better on skin, that needs the warmth to round it out.

Dean imagines pressing against Cas’s solid form, that sharp scent tingling in his nostrils as he noses along the sharp jut of his collarbone, along his stubbled jaw, and shudders—this train of thought needs to stop, now, before it gets out of hand.

He all but jumps into the shower and cranks on the water, realizing too late that he forgot his shampoo and soap. Thank God Sam left his in here. He doesn’t even want to think about going to bed with Cas’s scent all over him. Too late, and the thought brings on an unwelcome but not unpleasant shiver.

The water is cold, just like Castiel promised, and Dean is grateful for it.

It should be helping his little problem, but picturing the lines inked in Cas’s skin as he’s wrapped up in that crisp scent is keeping him at half mast. He forces himself to think about food instead, racking his brain for his mom’s pie crust recipe until he’s sure he knows it by heart and the gentle throb fades away.

***

By Wednesday Dean has fallen into a routine. He wakes up, showers (mostly to avoid another incident like Monday night), and goes to prep for breakfast. Then it’s cook, eat, and clean. He takes to wandering the paths through the small woods in the hour or so between the end of one meal’s clean-up and the beginning of preparations for the next.

He’s so deep in thought that he literally runs into Cas as he emerges from a narrow, unmarked path, decked out in full beekeeping gear. He chuckles as Dean jumps, cursing under his breath.

“I thought you were a freakin’ yeti.”

“That’s ridiculous, Dean. Yetis’ summer coats are brown, not white,” he teases, eyes bright behind netting.

Dean huffs a laugh and tries to relax, but his heart rate refuses to slow. He looks Cas up and down. “How are the bees?”

“Busy. It’s quite a sight. Would you like to come see?”

Dean pauses and checks his watch, wincing. He hates to refuse, since he technically already agreed, but he and Jo need to start on dinner soon.

“Another time,” Cas promises. “Besides, I don’t want to deprive the campers of your cooking.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but his blush gives him away.

They walk side by side on the path, Dean with his hands in his pockets, Cas’s arms wrapped up in his headgear, neither of them saying much of anything. Dean keeps his eyes on the ground in front of him and on Cas’s feet moving next to his. He trusts him to lead them back. Every few paces they bump shoulders, and Dean staggers sideways a step. Each time takes him back to Monday night when he’d almost creamed himself like a teenager just from seeing the guy _fully dressed_ fresh out of the shower. Not that it was any big mystery— he hasn’t found an appropriate time to take care of things in weeks.

But it’s not just The Incident that’s knocking him off balance. He doesn’t quite remember how to do this, how to be friendly without the structure of sessions and rules. When was the last time he had an acquaintance who hadn’t already heard him confess his deepest and darkest in group? Small talk should be a relief, but it’s a half-yawn, hiding his teeth for the sake of politeness.

“So is this what you do with your free time? Amateur bigfoot hunting?”

He doesn’t realize how far he’s retreated into his own head until Cas’s voice draws him back out.

“I’ve been reading a lot lately, actually. Right now I’m in the middle of _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ ,” says Dean, latching onto the conversation starter.

Cas is silent, and Dean looks over to see him fighting a smile.

“What?” he asks, his own smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“I’m very fond of Adams’ works.”

From there the conversation meanders as much as the path they follow, through sci-fi and fantasy novels and on to movies. Cas has seen every old horror film ever made— more than Dean even knew existed, and he’s spent his fair share of late nights in front of a screen flashing black and white— but somehow missed out on the true classics.

“So that’s why you didn’t like my Cornelius joke. Not into kids’ movies?”

“Dean, I haven’t watched a kids’ movie since I was a kid.”

Dean stops short. “Well that’s gotta change. You’d love this one. It’s got a fairy prince who rides a bumblebee around like a friggin’ Harley.”

Cas chuckles at the image and nudges Dean’s shoulder to get him moving again.

The steady green of the main grounds comes into view up ahead, and Dean walks a little slower. He still doesn’t know what to make of Cas, but he’s gotten into the groove of just _talking_ again, and he hates to lose that momentum.

Cas looks up at him curiously when he stops in the shade of the trees, and almost before he realizes he’s thinking it Dean blurts, “Same time next week?”

He winks and clicks his tongue loudly a beat too late.

Cas’s face is serious, assessing. He sees right through him. “Right here?”

Dean can only nod.

Still processing, he stumbles into the kitchen with no idea how he got there, though he assumes his feet had something to do with it. He furrows and unfurrows his brow, clenches and unclenches his jaw. _Why’d he have to look so sincere?_

Jo must finally get tired of his space cadet impression. She snaps her fingers in front of his face with a scowl to rival her mother’s.

He jumps. “What? Nothing.”

“DINGDINGDINGDING!”

It’s Dean’s turn to level a clueless look at her.

“Oh, it’s my bullshit detector, borrowed it from Charlie. She’s right. You are pinging something _awful_ ,” says Jo, arranging chicken breasts on a baking rack. She juts her chin toward the spice rack, and he obeys, sweeping up herb shakers and oil in one hand, salt and pepper in the other.

“Great. Exactly what I need is you two harpies gossiping about me.”

“Not gossiping. She just said she got a certain vibe off of you and wanted to check it out. Can’t blame a girl for being careful.”

He sets down the rosemary and faces her, arms crossed. “And what kind of vibe would that be?” Untrustworthy? Dishonest? Dangerous?

“Squirrelly,” she says, deadpan.

He’ll consider that a yes to all three.

At that the conversation falls away, and the only sounds are the creak of oven doors, the tock of knives chopping veggies, water boiling away between rice grains.

Dean hears her suck in a breath to speak, but she hesitates and lets it escape as a sigh. She does it two more times, and he can tell she’s growing frustrated. He is too. Finally, she tries again, her voice uncharacteristically gentle.

“Really, Dean. You ok?”

He stares at her, head cocked to the side.

_Is he ok? He just agreed to go see Cas’s bees— God, he hopes that’s not code for something. He works at a summer camp, except without the paycheck. Been out of rehab less than a week. Before that— dumped, probably. Dad left. Ash left. Sam left._

“No, Jo,” he says, the short version. “But hey, fake it til you make it, right?”

She shakes her head, almost imperceptibly.

***

There’s an empty chair next to Dean when he sits down to breakfast Thursday morning. That’s odd. He’s usually the last one to take his seat. He knows who it should be, but scans the rest of the table anyway. Sure enough, Cas is missing. He tries not to take it personally— not everything is about him— but what if Cas feels weird about what he said yesterday? Maybe Dean made him uncomfortable and now Cas is avoiding him. He hopes not.

All that washes away when Cas folds himself neatly into his usual chair, barely five minutes late. He has that damn jumpsuit tied around his waist again, and whenever he shifts the end of one sleeve catches on the denim creases between Dean’s hip and thigh. When he leans forward Dean can see where his tattoo ends, following the muscular ridge just beyond the seam of his sleeve where it’s ridden up on his shoulder. Dean knows he must look stricken, thank God and whoever else that no one is looking at him. He would just _once_ like to not find a tattoo sexy.

“How’s the bees?” Sam asks, chuckling.

He was too distracted to hear what prompted the question, and he doesn’t hear Cas’s answer to it. He’s zeroed in on Missouri, who scoffed at the mention of bees and is now muttering into her plate of scrambled eggs. What stung her in the ass?

“So is _that_ why you came in all _dreamy_ last night? You got a date with the beekeeper?” Jo hisses in his ear, and he jumps, turning to stare blankly at Cas.

“I told them about our beekeeping date,” he says with an exaggerated wink and gummy smile.

Dean leers back, glad to relax into the joke. “Just don’t let them sting me anywhere delicate.”

“Those things are a menace,” Missouri sing-songs not quite under her breath.

Cas just sighs, like he’s heard it a thousand times, “For fuck’s sake.” Maybe he has.

Missouri ignores him and turns a concerned look on Dean. “Honey if any of those awful things so much as touches you, you come to my office right away, I always have an emergency epipen on hand.”

He tries to send a grateful smile her way, but it’s ruined by the tension that settles like a presence over the table. Dean is only too grateful to escape to the kitchen.

The morning’s pans are already scrubbed and drying by the time Jo joins him.

“Could you be a little more obvious?” she says, scraping leftovers into the trash and stacking plates on the counter.

“Is no one supposed to know we wash the dishes?” He’s not dodging the question, exactly. He’s just strategically missing the point.

She hits him with a level stare.

“You like him.”

“One, I’m gonna guess you mean Cas, since the only other ‘him’ here is my brother.” Dean crosses his arms and stares down at her. “Two, I barely know the guy. Three, I just got dumped, like a month ago, and I don’t do rebounds.”

Jo rolls her eyes and pushes him toward the dish tank before speaking again. “Right. And you didn’t come in here all dazed and dreamy yesterday, didn’t panic when Cas mentioned the bees just now— which _isn’t_ a date, in case you were wondering. He did the same with me and Charlie— and the death glare at Missouri was just a casual glance.”

Dean had momentarily forgotten the tension he’d noticed between Cas and Missouri. The irrational protectiveness he felt at breakfast comes rushing back.

“What’s her problem, anyway? I mean, there’d be bees everywhere whether or not he had a hive, right?”

Jo scrunches her face.

“I’d like to say there’s a juicy story there, but she’s just kind of… unpredictable. Sam says half the time he’s not even sure she likes _him_ , so…” She trails off, shrugging.

“I know if I push you you’ll just run away, so this is all I’m gonna say. He’s sat on the other side of Sam for three years.” She gives his arm a final pat and leaves him be, as promised.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s too quiet and there are too many thoughts in his head. Thoughts he shouldn’t be having. Thoughts he really does not want to be having.

Dean flops onto his stomach and pulls the sheet over his head, wishing it wasn’t too warm for blankets. He always sleeps better with more weight on him.

He’s trying not to fixate on it, but what Jo said that morning haunted him all day. Was Cas’s switching places that significant? She seemed to think so.

The idea turns over and over in his mind. Ok, so he might be interested. It doesn’t matter. Dean is a flirt, but he’s not the kind of guy to just go jumping from relationship to relationship.

He wishes there was someone else in the room, just something to focus on besides his own thoughts. Hell, even dickbag Alistair would do. He can’t believe that in a house full of people, he’s _lonely_.

Rehab was one thing. He always held onto the hope that he would end up back with Lisa. But here… here it feels permanent, like it’s definitely over. She didn’t even text back when he left her a voicemail to let her know he made it ok.

He rolls onto his side, then his back, Vitruvian Man style. He can’t relax then either. He gets up and wanders downstairs but doesn’t know what to do with himself once he’s there, just stalls on the bottom step.

Right now’s about the time he’d grab a beer and numb himself with infomercials. When you’re half-drunk a WalletNinja doesn’t sound like a bad idea. But he couldn’t do that here, even if he wanted to. It’s a summer camp. Still, he heads for the Impala as if on autopilot, thumbing at the indent on his naked ring finger.

Light from the Mess puts the brakes on that. Right. That was what got him into this mess. He has to investigate the lights, anyway, and that’s how he finds himself in an industrial kitchen with a ten-year-old at 1am.

“What are you doing out of bed, and in my kitchen in particular?” Dean really doesn’t mean to scare the kid, speaks as gently as possible, but he jumps, emptying the bag of English muffins onto the floor in front of the fridge.

“Think how worried your counselor would be… you’re one of Kevin’s right?”

The kid nods.

“Come on, I’ll walk you back.”

“Can I get my snack first?”

The kid looks up at him and Dean recognizes his expression as one he’s been seeing in the mirror lately.

“Homesick?”

The kid looks down at the floor and shakes his head, but his fingers betray him, twisting around the empty bag.

Dean sighs and pats the counter. “Hop up, uh...”

“Jesse,” the kid supplies.

“All right, pick your poison,” Dean sighs

“English muffin pizzas?”

Dean makes two.

***

Dean stays out of the woods the next day. He’s too tired to be on guard, constantly watching and waiting for a certain yeti look-alike who _might_ be into him to pop out of nowhere, while his heart races with something between anticipation and dread. _Oh, who’s he kidding? It’s both at once._

Instead he wanders over the the generously named lake, _Hitchhiker’s Guide_ in hand, and plops down on the dock. A few campers splash each other in the shallows while belly-laughs drift to shore from the float in the middle. Shouldn’t someone be supervising these kids?

“Cassie, get off of Aiden’s shoulders!” shouts a voice from behind him. Curls bounce as a girl he assumes to be Cassie shakes her head furiously.

“But Adam said—”

“I don’t care. No chicken on my watch.” The voice’s owner stomps to the end of the dock. It’s Kevin.

They’ve only really spoken once before, in the clammy 2am air when Dean returned Jesse to his cabin. He had to respect the way Kevin handled the kid even half asleep. He actually seems grumpier now that he’s fully awake.

“What did you do to get stuck with this?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Kevin doesn’t look away from the water, but crosses his arms and rocks on his bare feet.

“Well, you’re doing a hell of a Marvin impression right now,” he says, jabbing the book’s spine in his direction.

“Uh, yeah old-timey sci-fi references mean nothing to me. Try something this century.”

That honestly sets Dean back on his heels. The book’s barely older than he is. _What is happening to the kids these days?_

“Just hold on a minute, Squidward. This is a _classic_. And what crawled in your sleeping bag and died?”

Kevin looks offended.

Huh. Who would’ve thought indulging Ben’s horrible taste in TV would actually pay off? He almost wishes he could call and brag about his little victory, hear Ben’s cackle and the smile that would leak around Lisa’s disapproving tone. He can still imagine their every detail after five weeks apart. It aches, but he holds onto it. He both craves and dreads the day that he can’t anymore, though he doubts it’ll happen soon.

“I guess Charlie told you about me and Channing? She can’t really hold anything back once she gets going, so…” he trails off, and Dean nods, wondering where this is headed.

“Yeah, well, she wasn’t exactly thrilled about me going back to _Happy Orphan Funtime Land_ ,” he continues, airquotes unused but heavily implied. “Said it was morbid, like everybody had a ghost trailing after them. It kinda stuck with me. Funny, I don’t remember her saying that to convince me to apply last year. Called it a resume-builder.”

“Now that’s morbid.”

“But what if she was right? I mean, those kids on the raft wouldn’t be giggling if someone hadn’t died.”

“Maybe not,” he admits, “but I’d take happiness any way I could get it.”

“Still sucks though,” Kevin says, squinting at the water.

Dean claps him on the back. “Bigtime.”

Silence a few beats, then Kevin turns to look at him like he’s just realized something.

“Hey, how did you know Jesse was up last night?”

Crap. He should’ve guessed Kevin would think about that.

“Oh, I sleep in the kitchen,” he deadpans. “The lights woke me up.”

Kevin rolls his eyes. “Come on, man. I just bared my soul.”

Kid’s got a point. And if anyone here could understand, it’d be him. Well, besides Jody. He’s going to have to tell her eventually, but he’s not exactly eager to have that conversation.

“Couldn’t sleep, was about to go do something stupid. I saw lights on in the mess, and it kinda pulled me out.”

He looks down at his hands, gripping the book hard. Kevin doesn’t say anything more, but Dean sees him nod out of the corner of his eye.

 

# 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Saturday is torture. The talent show is that night and Sam thought it would be a good idea to just order a mess of pizzas. Delivery. That leaves Dean with nothing to do all afternoon but fly under the radar, trying to disappear into the couch cushions and the last few chapters of _Hitchhiker’s Guide_.

No such luck. Jo drafts him to help set up rows of benches in the barn, and he grumbles his displeasure at the whole affair. Everyone just seems way too _into it_.

They have good reason to be, he learns that night. This talent show is the stuff of viral video gold. He can’t believe this kind of thing happens in real life. Charlie’s cabin has composed a Camp Song, and all but one of them forgets the words. Most are mumbling and giving each other panicked looks while one, who he recognizes as the one Charlie calls Granger, plows through gritting her teeth and glaring at her cabinmates.

Kevin and Garth’s cabins have teamed up to act out a Camp Campbell Civil War, and Krissy and Josephine exchange good-natured trash talk over their campers’ ‘comedy’ sketches.

He and Sam sit next to each other in the front row and while Dean tries to hold on to his indifference, Sam’s enthusiasm is really ruining it. He’s positively _bouncing_ in his seat, his whole face accordioned into a smile. Every so often he sweeps his hair back and leans forward like he just can’t get close enough to the stage.

Dean feels it’s just his big-brotherly duty to rein him in a little and elbows him back. “Hey, maybe some other people would like to see the show,” he ribs.

Sam shrugs, unperturbed. “Sorry, just I spend so much time in my office doing business stuff, I hardly ever get to just see the kids having fun.”

“You should get out more. Isn’t that what you have Missouri for?”

Sam turns his whole body away from the stage, and Dean senses he’s about to get serious.

“Yeah, but when I’m trying to build up funding for next year, and hopefully the next couple years, donors don’t want to hear the story second-hand. So if I want to keep this thing going and get to have more nights like this, I’ll gladly slave away behind a desk all day. And let’s be honest, she can be kinda harsh sometimes. Not a chance I’m willing to take.”

Dean is suddenly struck by how _grown up_ his baby brother is. He has priorities. He’s doing something real. Dean kind of wants to hug him. He doesn’t, just claps him on the back and leans over to say, “I’m proud of you Sammy.”

Sam looks at him seriously, and Dean hopes his eyes haven’t gone as soft as they feel.

“Me too,” he says.

“You should be. You worked hard for this.”

“No, idiot,” Sam scoffs. “I’m proud of you too.”

“Why?” He hasn’t done anything lately that Sam should be proud of.

Sam looks uncomfortable. “For… for taking care of yourself. I can’t imagine it’s easy.”

Dean wonders if he’d still be inclined to say that if he knew about his near slip-up the other night. Sam’s a sucker for all this sharing crap, and he deserves to know, but now’s not the time. This is supposed to be a good night for him.

Back in his room, he lingers in front of the dresser where three picture frames stand in a line. It’s a little like a shrine, he realizes. And kind of creepy. Everyone in these photos is dead, save him and Sammy. Ash, rocking out on the night of the mullet’s farewell tour right before he went in for Basic. Dad, dimpled and handsome, leaning against the _Winchester Auto_ etched on door of the garage. It’s hard to believe there are three people in the oldest and smallest picture— Mom, Dean on her lap and baby Sammy in his— because it’s Mary’s smile that dominates the frame. So proud. Her sunny hair feathers away from her face, a holdover from the seventies. Somehow it makes her look timeless.

"You’d still be so proud of him, Mom," he whispers as if she can hear him. "Me, not so much, but I’m working on it."

Maybe he’s a sucker too.

He pats the top of the dresser before undressing and falling into bed, bits of Granger’s Camp Song floating around his head.

_We love Camp Campbell, Campbell, Camp Campbell…_

***

Three days worth of shame and guilt finally come to a head Sunday morning, and breakfast sits uncomfortably in Dean’s stomach as he knocks on Sam’s office door. He has to talk to Jody about what almost happened Thursday night, how he barely made it a week before he was ready to practically _dive_ off the wagon, and there’s no way he can do that in the house. _Don’t panic. Don’t panic._ Guilt-ridden as he is, he’s nowhere near actually panicking, but the simple mantra is comforting.

"Yeah?" comes Sam's muffled voice.

His hair is pulled into a low ponytail, which makes him look like an art teacher instead of the lawyer-slash-camp-director he is. It also makes him look older, and he scowls when Dean tells him so.

“You didn’t come to my office just to insult me,” he says, but pulls the band out anyway and throws it on a stack of papers.

“Nope, need to use your phone.”

Sam motions to the landline on the desk but otherwise doesn’t move.

“In private?”

Sam rises as if to leave but turns back and settles against the doorframe. The sight reminds Dean all too much of their adolescent years, when Sam would plant himself in earshot whenever he was on the phone, like he even understood what Dean was talking about. He waits, saying nothing, eyebrows raised.

Enough with the silent interrogation. “I have to call Jody, ok?”

Apparently that satisfies him, as Sam pushes off with a nod and closes the door behind him.

Before Dean can talk himself out of it, he punches in Jody’s number. He doesn’t bother with niceties when she answers, just barrels right through his confession. To her credit, she listens in silence to the meandering story.

“...I don’t even know what I was thinking. It’s not like nobody would’ve found out, I would’ve had to call somebody to come get me,” he finishes, feeling pathetic. The pride Sam claimed to feel would disappear if he knew he almost had to go rescue his big brother from his own dumb drunk ass.

Jody finally breaks her silence, her tone concerned and authoritative in one.

“Next time, call me right away. ‘Cause there’s probably gonna be a next time. I don’t care how late it is, I don’t care who’s gonna hear, we’ll talk it out. Your recovery is important, and you have to make it a priority.”

“I do. I am, honestly. I pulled myself out and did something productive.” The last bit is mostly true. “But I know that I won’t always be able to do that. So yeah, next time I’ll call you.”

“And you’ll check in again next week? And how about lunch sometime? We don’t have to talk about this specifically. Just how you’re doing. Tell me all about that camp of yours.” He can hear the smile in her voice, and her easy authority reminds him of Ellen. God forbid they ever meet. That’d be lethal for him.

“We have a break in a couple weeks. How bout I tell you about it then?”

“Sure thing, hon. Take care.”

Sam is sitting in the reception area when Dean comes out of the office, looking up at him out of the corner of his eye like he’s not quite sure if he’s allowed to make eye contact. Dean can tell he wants to say something.

“What’s up Sammy?”

His little brother hesitates, clearing his throat and rubbing his hands on his jeans. Dean gives him an expectant look.

“You can talk to me too, if you need to.” Now he finally looks up. “I mean, I haven’t had the same issue, but I have ears. Plus, I’m your brother, we’ve kinda got a history.”

Dean shifts his weight, and it’s his turn to not quite make eye contact. His voice is muted when he speaks. “I know, Sammy, and I appreciate the offer— I do. But that’s part of the reason I can’t talk to you. Not about this.”

Sam’s features seem to shrink into his face, but he nods, understanding. Dean leaves before the expression can hit him full force, tugging on a loose strand of Sam’s hair as he passes by.

***

That night Jo declares movie night, no exceptions, so they pile into the living room to watch _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ on the ancient block of a television. It’s been one of their favorites since they were kids, and even the way they sit on the couch reminds Dean of all their times staying with Ellen, when he would have to separate them so they couldn’t kick each other and ruin the movie. There’s no kicking now, but Jo does bean Sam with a throw pillow, laughing at Dean’s warning glance.

Cas comes in halfway through the opening scene and waves off Jo’s offer to make room at the end of the couch. Instead he settles on the floor between her and Dean’s legs. Her hand trails through his hair for a moment, neatening it, and if Dean didn’t absolutely know better he’d swear they were a couple. He tries not to be jealous of their easy comfort with each other, but his chest feels hollow anyway, wondering what Cas’s reaction would be if he reached out and mussed his hair again.

Dean’s eyes should be glued to the screen— it is Harrison Ford after all— but Cas is distracting. He doesn’t exactly fit in the space between Jo’s right leg and Dean’s left, and every time he jumps his whole side grazes Dean’s whole calf. Dean tries not to jerk at every brush, but Cas doesn’t seem to notice. Jo, however, looks between the two of them with open amusement in the dim room, and with a smirk draws her legs up to shove her toes under Dean’s thigh.

It knocks Cas slightly off balance, and when he rights himself the long plane of his side presses firmly against Dean’s leg. He doesn’t dare breathe. Cas also sits stock still for a moment, then carefully shifts, pulling his legs up to wrap his arms around them so that just his shoulder is in contact with Dean’s knee. He leaves it there.

Eventually Dean relaxes enough to let his leg press gently back against Cas’s shoulder, feeling like a teenager testing the waters with someone who might _like-like_ him. It’s been years since he’s been this timid, but he’s never known anyone like Cas. He’s impossible to read. Sometimes he thinks he’s getting a hint, but it turns out it’s just Cas being Cas. And if Jo’s eternal wisdom is any guide, sometimes the smallest, seemingly innocuous gestures are the biggest hints. His eyes are drawn to the spot where he and Cas are leaning into each other, almost studying it. He still doesn’t know what to make of it.

He isn’t watching the movie, but he hardly needs to. He knows it so well he can tell exactly what’s happening just by paying attention to Cas’s reactions. He’s pretty sure that other than Cas, Jo is the only one who _is_ watching. Missouri probably nodded off within the first half hour, curled up in the armchair with her cheek squashed against her fist. She’ll be complaining about her stiff neck tomorrow. Sam’s phone has been buzzing about every two minutes, probably with texts from Amelia. He’s barely said two words about her, but judging by the pictures in his office and the sappy smile that takes over his face every time a message comes in, he’s in deep. It’s good to see his brother like this. After Jess died he was afraid Sammy wouldn’t ever get to have something like that again. Or wouldn’t let himself. For once, Dean’s glad to be wrong.

Still, what kind of big brother would he be if he didn’t rib him a little? The next time the phone buzzes Dean grabs it right out from underneath his larger, slower brother and holds it out on the other side of Jo’s head. Before he can swipe open the message a hand clamps onto his ear and drags his head to the side.

He winces as Sam says, “Think carefully about whether or not you want to know what’s in that message.”

And that’s all it takes. Eyes closed against possible contamination, he passes the phone back to the snickering little shit. He waits until the noise of typing stops before opening his eyes. Sam is smirking.

Dean stares at him, horrified. “Wait, are you really _sexting_? With me sitting right next to you?”

He’s afraid to look down, just in case.

“No, but it’d serve you right for being a dick.”

Dean shoots him a dead-eyed stare before scooting an inch or so closer to Jo, jostling Cas in the process. He pins Dean with a glare of his own before turning back to the screen.

When the credits roll, Dean stretches his legs out and slumps low on the couch but doesn’t move beyond that. He’s content here, squished between his brother and his surrogate sister, Cas’s quiet, steady presence at his knee. Hell, even Missouri’s snores add to the domestic vibe. Sam is the first to actually move,ejecting the DVD and snapping it back into its case, then heading upstairs with a whispered “Night”.

Cas rises next, steadying himself with a hand placed a careful inch away from Dean’s hip, then pulls Jo up off the couch in a motion that looks well-practiced. Dean expects him to head toward the stairs, but he turns and extends a hand to Dean. It’s warm and lightly calloused, and he pulls Dean to his feet with ease. They’re too close once he’s vertical, almost leaning into each other in the small space. He can smell slightly burned microwave popcorn on Cas’s breath.

“If you guys are gonna do that staring thing, can you at least not hold me hostage and make me watch?”

Dean jerks away, and steps back to let Jo through. She smirks and arches a brow as she passes. He can feel himself blushing as he stoops to shake Missouri awake, not straightening until he hears two sets of footsteps on the stairs.

 

# 

 


	6. Chapter 6

Monday afternoon four kids come trooping into the kitchen, whispering and pushing each other to the front of the group. He recognizes one as the girl who argued with Kevin the other day at the lake, and another as the boy whose shoulders she’d been sitting on. A boy he doesn’t recognize ends up as the leader, and he shyly holds up a piece of paper scrawled with a list Dean can barely make out.

“Can you get these for us?”

Dean squints at the list.

_6 bowls_   
_6 pitchers_   
_measuring cups_   
_vinegar (as much as you can spare)_   
_baking soda (“)_

“What, are you building a bomb?” he asks, though he recognizes the vinegar-baking soda reaction. “Where’d this come from?”

“Mr. Cas says we’re gonna make volcanoes on the beach,” Cassie speaks up from the back.

There’s no way four kids can carry all this to the lake. He tells them to wait in the mess and begins stacking a kitchen cart with volcano supplies. He grabs some food dye too, for special effects.

The vinegar-baking soda reaction was one of Ben’s favorite activities in his 6th grade science class. He came home that day raving about it, and he and Dean sat in the kitchen that afternoon while he explained exactly how it worked and searched YouTube for videos so Dean could see it in action. A tight smile comes across his face at the memory. A hell of a smart kid, Ben. He’s gonna grow up amazing, even better now without Dean around to screw him up.

“Mr. Dean?”

His head snaps up. One of the kids is poking her head around the doorway, unsure.  
“Perfect timing, kiddo. Everything’s ready.” His voice barely squeezes around the lump in his throat.

He pushes the cart out through the mess and toward the lake, flanked by a gang of tiny bodyguards.

About thirty kids are waiting, digging in the sand in groups of five. Taller figures are crouched with two of the groups, and one rises as they approach.

“These chicken scratches yours?” Dean says, holding up the crumpled list.

Cas nods and swipes a sandy hand through his hair, the grit sticking it up in places like sex-on-the-beach hair.

Dean pulls the cart in between them, lowering his voice. “I brought food coloring too, in case any of the groups wanted to pretty up their explosions.”

Cas’s face grows wary. “No glitter, though, right?”

“Why would we keep glitter in the kitchen?”

“In my line of work you acquire a healthy fear of the stuff. Can never be too cautious.”

He shrugs, then puts two fingers in his mouth, whistling to get the kids’ attention. Cas lays out the instructions and thirty-ish heads nod, including Dean’s. He can’t help but be impressed that Cas can get so many kids to obey him so easily. Though he loves kids and they him, he was always more of a buddy than authority figure. If Dean tried to tell them what to do they’d probably stage a coup.

Cas crosses to his side of the cart, holding out the box of color. “Would you mind doing the colors? Since it was your idea.”

Dean fumbles as their fingers overlap around the small package but manages to tuck it into his back pocket without any of the campers noticing. He’d like it to be a surprise.

They stand together watching the kids’ progress, listening to to the sounds of activity and gentle waves while one by one the groups send members to collect their supplies. It’s… serene. And comforting. And Dean feels settled in that moment, like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be. Next to him, Cas lets his hands hang in his pockets, the bends of his joints loose and open, and the posture leads Dean to believe he feels the same.

It’s probably why he leans over and says, “Aren’t kids the best?”

Cas tips his head and squints up at him, like he’s not sure how to interpret the comment.

Dean laughs, realizing it could sound like he’s hitting on him. “Sorry, that sounds like a line but I really mean it. Kids are great.”

Cas nods, slowly, eyes scanning over the groups yet to finish mounding sand into volcanoes.

“I never thought so until I started working with them,” he admits. “Even then it took a while.” He turns back to Dean, squint deepening as if a brand new though has just occurred to him. “Sam never mentioned any nieces or nephews. Do you have children?”

Of all the possible inquiries into his personal life, this was the one he least expected.

While he tries to regain speech, Krissy comes up and grabs the tin of baking soda, looking between the two of them, calculating. It doesn’t help.

“Uh, no,” he finally says. “He wasn’t mine.“ He looks out over the grounds, searching for a way to explain. “He could’ve been. Maybe. If I’d stuck around.”

It’s not quite what he means, but it’s adequate, and Cas seems to understand.

“It’s complicated,” he says and grabs the jug of vinegar.

“It shouldn’t be...” Dean trails off, following him over to a group seated in the sand.

His part of the activity takes the longest. First each group has to agree on a color, and then they have to direct Dean to the precise shade they have in mind. Maybe he shouldn’t have made it a surprise. By the time he gets to the last group only the red dye remains, and he offers it to them with a grimaced apology. He needn’t have worried. The boys wanted pink lava anyway to match Mr. Cas’s shirt. They call him over to stand for comparison as he directs the groups to pour the baking soda into the sand, followed by their colored vinegars, and foamy pastels bloom over the ground.

Dean sits out of the way, leaning on his hands and watching, as a similar reaction takes place somewhere inside his ribcage. Cas’s shirt is actually sun-faded red and boxy, like it’s been worn outside and dried too hot for several years running. He’s relaxed, wiggling his toes into the sand until his feet sink all the way up to the rolled cuffs of his jeans, and his face cracks into a grin, only the second real smile Dean has seen out of him. Maybe he rations them because they’re so blinding, all white teeth and crow’s feet he seems too young to have.

Dean can’t wait for the next time he gets to see one.

***

He isn’t nervous. That’s definitely not the reason he swings wide to head for the lake instead of the spot he agreed to meet Cas at. And he definitely isn’t worrying about hanging around all alone waiting to be stood up on what is definitely not a date. Nope. He just wants to see Charlie. She looks pretty bored sitting on the dock. Laughing.

Dean sighs inwardly. He's a twelve-year-old in a thirty-year-old’s body. 

She looks up when his footsteps thud on the wooden planks.

“What’s up bi— ro...”

At Dean’s raised eyebrows she motions to the water.

“Impressionable ears,” she explains. “So, come to help me lifeguard?”

“Sorry, Charlie. Can’t. I’m waiting for Cas.”

She gives him a knowing look. “Right. Today’s the day you meet the bees. Now, you be sure to make a good impression or they won’t let you back.”

“You guys are really short on gossip fodder here aren’t you?”

She shrugs. “I mean, last year Kevin and Channing were a bigger deal, no question. But now that they’re broken up and she’s not even here… you and Cas are kind of it.”

“We’re not though,” Dean insists, pinching the bridge of his nose. _Fine_. So maybe there was… tension… between them, for lack of a better word. But they barely knew each other and there was no fucking way Dean was going to get involved with someone at his _brother’s summer camp_.

He catches movement to his right and looks up, his stomach seizing at the sight of Cas stepping out of the shelter of the woods in a black t-shirt and jeans.

Not even with the breathtakingly hot rec director. He swallows, hard, and hears the sound of a shutter click.

“What the hell was that?” he demands, glaring down at the girl who should get back to guarding lives if she values her own.

“Evidence,” she says, smug.

He contemplates the merits of chucking her phone into the lake, but that’d probably just earn him an ass-kicking from Charlie on top of a stern talking to from Sammy, and as bad as a scolding sounds, he’s slightly more afraid of what Charlie could do to him. Besides, he has bees to meet.

She seems to be thinking the same thing, because she’s put the phone away and is pushing at the side of his leg.

“Go. Go! I need this.”

“You need a hobby is what you need,” he mutters but heads down the dock. It doesn’t feel quite like walking— he seems to have forgotten how— just jerking his legs forward so that he’s standing closer and closer to the edge of the woods, to Castiel.

Dean doesn’t know where the hell to look. He can’t just stare the guy down like he’s hunting him or something, but he can’t pretend he doesn’t see him either. _Should’ve just sucked it up and gotten there first_ , he tells himself. He settles for glancing between Cas and the ground in front of him, like he’s looking out for holes or something.

Cas leans against a tree, watching, cool as fucking menthol, arms crossed in front of his chest. _The bastard._

“I was beginning to wonder if you would stand me up in plain sight.” One eye closes completely when he squints, like Popeye, and it drags his mouth into a half-smile.

Dean manages one of his own, hoping that was a joke. “Nah, not my style. I like to run out right around the time the waiter starts asking about dessert.”

Cas pushes a short exhale through his nose, squint deepening for a split second. Not quite the laugh Dean was going for, but he’ll take it. They stand there for a beat in silence, the blurry divide of sun and shade arcing between them, before Dean steps over it, inclining his head toward the path.

“Lead on.”

Cas turns and leads him down the narrow trail to the hive, deftly navigating raised roots and tangled branches, turning back to watch Dean’s progress. Slowly. He’d do anything to keep from tripping under Cas’s gaze. Cas doesn’t say much, just occasionally calls back to watch for thorns or spiderwebs.

When they finally step out into a small clearing Dean is flushed with exertion, and sweat sticks his shirt to the small of his back. Six weeks of sitting around talking doesn’t really prepare a guy for tromping through the woods, much less under the spotlight of those thousand-watt eyes. He doesn’t know what to make of the attention.

The boxes are simple, just wooden planks assembled into clean lines. Movement near the bottom draws Dean’s eyes, and the initials _CN_ come into view as a clump of bees disperses. He circles the boxes, giving them a wide berth, and sees that the other end is emblazoned with _Camp Campbell._

“Did you make these?”

Cas nods.

“They’re amazing. Where did you learn this?”

Cas shrugs. “Books and YouTube videos, mostly, until I happened upon a formal course in college. This hive was supposed to be part of my thesis research.”

“They teach beekeeping in college?” Dean snorts.

“It’s usually an elective. You’d be surprised at some of the courses offered.”

“Damn. So why bees?”

“My high school English teacher, actually. She gave me a book on apiculture and after that I wanted to know everything about them.” Cas’s stare turns inward, and his voice gains an edge. “I thought I was gonna save the world. Save the bees, save the environment, all that.” He sits down heavily in a ratty beach chair barely a foot high and stares up at Dean, legs stretched long across the grass between them. “It was… naive,” he finishes with a shrug.

Dean hovers between Cas’s chair and the edge of the clearing before crossing it to lean against the small shed on his other side.

He nods. “One person can’t save the world. Hell, even Batman could only handle Arkham City.”

A bee scouts Cas’s shoelaces, and they both pause to watch it.

“So, now that you’re wiser,” Dean says when it hums away, “what’s your new plan? Be the next Burt’s Bees?”

“Actually, I received my student teaching placement a few weeks ago.”

Dean should’ve guessed, having seen the way he handled the kids on the beach the other day. Calm and authoritative without being commanding. Likeable, but not a pushover.

"Well, the children _are_ our future," he quips. "Seriously though, you’ll be great at it."

They lock eyes for a breath before Cas looks down, a small pleased smile softening the line of his cheekbone.

"Is there anything you're not good at? I mean, the kids, the bees— hell, carpentry," Dean says flinging an arm out toward the hive.

The smile widens and Cas’s chin tucks into his chest as he chuckles.

"I can't swim," he offers. He looks up through his lashes, shadows crisscrossing deep blue.

Dean smiles crookedly. "Well then we'll just have to fix that."

After that Dean can’t stay away. He goes on his walks as usual and always seems to end up there, sprawled in Cas’s beat-up chair a cautious distance from the hive, listening to the bees buzzing like the purring of a giant cat as he works his way through a thick paperback. Cas doesn’t seem surprised to find him like this, and a day later a second chair appears next to the first one, but Dean doesn’t use it— he much prefers Cas’s.

It’s only natural that Cas starts coming to the clearing when he has free time, sometimes tending to the bees or checking on the wildflowers, sometimes just relaxing in the chair that was meant to be Dean’s.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

“So what are you gonna do with your week off?”

Dean finishes bagging up a s’mores kit and looks up at Jo, brows raised questioningly.

She closes her eyes and gives a quick head shake. “Seriously, do you listen when people talk around you? Or are you too busy fantasizing about a certain—”

“Hey, remember that really embarrassing crush you used to have on me?”

“Yes I do, and I’m so glad I got over it.” She rolls her eyes, unaffected, and pushes another bag toward him with a commanding look. “ _As I was saying_ , we have a week off between sessions. Do you know what you’re doing?”

He distantly remembers promising Jody a lunch date, but he’s been a little preoccupied since then.

“I, uh, haven’t really thought about it too much.” But now that he _is_ thinking about it, he realizes he doesn’t know where he would stay. Here, in the deserted camp? He briefly wonders if Jody would take him in.

Jo interrupts his desperation-tinged train of thought.

“Well, my mom’s got a room for you at the Roadhouse if you want it.” She hesitates, watching him out of the corner of her eye, hands busy wrapping up graham crackers and chocolate in an orange cellophane bag. “I didn’t think you’d want it, considering. But if you do just say the word.”

He loves Ellen, he does. She was more of a parent to him than his own father had been. And he misses her. Ellen’s was as much of a home as he’d ever had, but he just cannot be there right now. Dean turns and places the finished packets in a cardboard box, ducking his head to cover as he swallows the lump in his throat.

“I’ll think about it,” he finally says, his voice blessedly steady.

Together they haul the filled boxes to the fire pit, where Cas and Sam are stacking logs inside a dug-out circle ringed by stones. Sam’s hair is tied up and they’re both sweaty, the fabric of their shirts darkened all the way down their backs.

Sam pauses to confer with Jo about the rest of the setup. Dean hears something about benches but he’s not really listening. He’s watching Cas kneel to readjust the wood pile. Dean can see the deep divot of his spine where his damp shirt sticks to it and the twitch of muscle under his skin as he pushes the logs into place. It turns Dean’s hearing staticky and sticks his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

“So, Dean,” Sam’s voice cuts in, making Dean look up sharply. Jo is gone and his brother is looking at him with raised eyebrows, lips pursed like he’s trying not to smile.

“I was thinking we could tell ‘Halls Stops the Coffin’ tonight.”

“What’s that?” Cas asks, rising and brushing his hands off on his jeans.

Now Sam actually smiles. “It’s kind of a scary story but also kind of a joke.”

“Actually it’s a bad pun with a really long setup. You’re gonna love it,” Dean clarifies, then snickers. “It scared the crap out of him and Jo when I told it to them as kids.”

Sam slaps him on the arm. “Hey, remember how Jo attacked you in retaliation?”

“Man, I thought I was going to be the first person ever beaten to death with a pillow. Too bad I don’t actually remember how it goes.”

“Well, figure it out, ‘cause we’re doing it. Hell, you can just do the sound effects. Now I should probably go help Jo with the benches before she gets violent.”

Cas nods, musing, “You’d think she would’ve grown out of that.”

Dean inclines his head, shrugging. “We indulged her. Really we brought it on ourselves.”

“I was going to suggest we go help them,” Cas begins, eyes narrowed but bright in what Dean was beginning to recognize as his usual smile, “but in that case I think it’s only appropriate we leave him to suffer.”

“I like your thinking,” Dean says, clapping him on the shoulder, one of the few spots he hasn’t sweated through.

***

The fire is well-established when Dean and Jo make it out to the fire pit after an admittedly rushed dinner cleanup. Sam sits in the smallest ring of benches holding a long charred stick, elbows braced on his drawn-up knees. Missouri shivers next to him, already wrapped in an afghan against the incoming evening chill. Dean picks his way through the rows of campers and counselors to slide in next to Sam, and Jo pulls her sweater tighter around herself as she inches around the fire to join Cas, now bundled in a Camp Campbell hoodie, on the other side of the fire.

Everyone is involved in their own conversations, and it all blends into a low burble while Sammy reminds him of how the story goes.

Sunset means s’mores. By the time all the cabins have had their turn at the fire, it’s truly dark, and Sam stands up, clearing his throat.

He jumps right into it, doesn’t bother with prelude

“Late one evening, a brother and a sister went out for a walk. They were halfway home when they heard rustling behind them.”

He nudges Dean, who takes that as his cue for sound effects.

“So they turn to look behind them,” Sam continues, “but nothing’s there, just a clump of bushes at the edge of the road.” He paces around the fire now, casting long shadows over the huddled audience. “So they keep walking, just a little more quickly. They walk for a while before they hear again from behind them…”

Dean remembers this now, and jumps right in. “Shh shhh shhhh...”

“...then…”

“BABOOM BABOOM!” Dean nearly bellows, more than a little satisfied to see Missouri jump.

“When they look behind them they see a coffin bouncing along the ground behind them, its lid slamming with every rebound.”

Sam pauses to let the horror sink in.

“So they _run_ as fast as they can the last quarter mile to their house, cutting through the alley, jumping over their backyard fence, coffin bumping along behind them the whole way.”

Dean keeps up his steady beat of _boom_ s as Sam tells the story, looking around at the rows of campers. He sees that both Granger and Jesse have snuggled up next to Charlie. Jesse whispers something in her ear and she nods, expression serious.

“They run into the house and up the stairs to the empty attic, safe with a flight of stairs between them and the coffin.”

Dean’s sound effects cut off and the group is silent save the crackling flames.

“Thud. Thud. Thud.”

Gasps.

“The coffin jumps up the stairs after them, and short of jumping out the window, they have nowhere else to run. They scramble around the dark attic, looking for something, anything to block the coffin’s path, but there’s nothing, not even box of junk. Something heavy bounces in the girl's hoodie pocket as she sprints back and forth— the bag of cough drops she put there earlier to help with her cold.”

At this, Dean sees Jo nudge Cas, her eyes already smiling, ready to laugh. Cas’s brighten in return, and Dean hopes no one spoiled the joke for him.

“Thinking quickly, she rips open the bag and sends them scattering down the stairs like marbles.”

Sam, Dean, and Jo all slap their hands on their thighs to make the clattering sound.

“And the coffin slipped, thumping back down the stairs, landing with a crash at the bottom.” Sam pauses for effect, grinning and meeting Dean’s eyes before looking out over the listeners. “‘Cause Halls stops the coffin.”

As the punchline sinks in, there’s a chorus of protests from some of the braver campers.

“Are you _kidding_ me?”

“It’s a _joke_?”

“Why didn’t they get turned into mummies or zombies or something?”

Dean’s grin is bittersweet. They remind him of another kid he used to know.

Long after bedtime the campers wander sleepily ahead of their counselors to their cabins, leaving the residents of the farmhouse to each other’s company. The smoke burns their eyes, has been for hours, but the sooner they go to bed the sooner they have to clean this mess up.

“So your story was a hit,” says Jo from her position sprawled across the bench to Dean’s right, tipping her head back to look upside down at the brothers.

“Cheap jump scares,” Missouri huffs.

Sam leans over to bump her with his shoulder. “Yeah but kids like that kind of stuff.”

Cas nods, staring vacantly into the diminishing fire, leaning heavily on an improvised poker.

“Hey Cas— “ Sam begins, sounding like he’s just remembered something.

Cas shoots him a warning look. “No, Sam. We don’t need to do this every time.”

Dean is suddenly reminded that they have years of friendship between them, that Cas might actually know his brother almost as well as he does. Especially these last few years.

“I’m your boss. Consider it a performance review,” Sam jokes.

Jo speaks up, slurring as if she were already half asleep. “We’re volunteers, Sam. Horse, mouth, something.”

Dean hopes she can stay awake long enough to make it back to the house, because he sure as hell isn’t carrying her.

“In the interest of honesty, I was more like a charity case,” Cas admits.

_What is that supposed to mean?_

“That’s worse,” she says through a yawn.

“You were a godsend, all of you. I was just going to say what a great job you’re doing, but if you don’t want the compliment…” Sam raises his eyebrows and inclines his head instead of finishing the thought. His voice practically bounces with teasing.

“All right, enough with the secret club bullshit. I need to know what the hell you’re all talking about.” Dean was aiming for grumpy, maybe a little fed-up, but it comes out hurt.

“Don’t be jealous,” says Jo, reaching back to pat his knee. “Soon enough you’ll have tons of stuff to make fun of Cas for.”

Dean looks at the man in question. His face has lost any trace of humor, all his features in straight lines.

“Maybe I wanted to know so I could defend him from you assholes.”

At this Cas’s gaze snaps to his, eyes bright with flame and smoke. The others are probably staring too, but he can’t find a reason to care.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Dean but there’s no real threat. Your brother just likes to embarrass me with tall tales from the recent past.” He looks down and his eyes scan the ground like he can see his thoughts laid out there. “I was a counselor when I first started here. An awful one. I’m the youngest of my family, so I had no idea how to act around children. I was… stiff. So focused on being a role model I was barely interacting with them. Several, I think, were actually afraid of me. In short, no one was having any fun.”

So far Dean doesn’t understand why his brother would think this is funny.

“It was the first year that had two sessions, so at the end of the first after everyone was checked out and on their way home, he called me into his office. I panicked. I thought he was going to tell me not to come back. I had nowhere else to go, couldn’t move back to campus for another month. I went in there ready to beg to stay, but all he did was ask me if I liked it here, if I wanted to be here.”

The details of the story stick like burrs in his mind.

“Hold on a second. If you have a family, why were you worried about having nowhere to go?” he cut in.

Cas jabs the end of his poker hard into the ground near his feet, shaking his head, and Dean briefly considers throwing himself into the fire.

“Sorry,” he almost whispers. _You’d think working at a place like this he’d learn some tact._

“He said yes, of course,” Sam takes over the story, and Cas doesn’t protest. “So I asked him to relax was all. ‘Cause we wanted him here too.” At that Cas flashes him a small, grateful smile.

Dean spreads his hands wide. “I don’t see anything embarrassing about that,” he says, and the look in those blue eyes sends waves of goosebumps over his skin.

***

Body and mind still humming, Dean steps out of his jeans and into boardshorts and scribbles a note before slipping out into the dark hallway. Cas’s door is cracked, his light on, casting a column of light into the hall. Dean stops short and clenches his fist around the scrap of paper in his hand. He can’t just slip a note under an open door. He’d have to go in there and ask himself, and that would make it a _thing_. Well, it would be a thing no matter how he asked. It’s not like he’d ever invite Sam or Jo to go swimming in the middle of the night. It’s too intimate, too— yeah. Too. Even more so if he asked in person.

He sighs, retreating to his own room. Maybe it’s a good thing he’s chickenshit. Even if Cas said no, he was about to cross a line and once he did, he couldn’t undo it, just like the wood from earlier couldn’t be unburned, just like he couldn’t un-appear at Lisa’s door and undo everything that happened after. The dynamic between them would change, irrevocably.

Throwing on a fresh pair of boxers, he falls into bed and argues himself to sleep.

***

Dean’s eyes blur, and a fuzzy black rectangle obscures his vision when he looks up from the paper he’s been staring at. The note is soft in his hand, corners all curled in after being handled for days, its ink sweat-smudged, evidence of how much he’s tried to dissuade himself from letting a flirtation become a promise.

He surprises himself by doing just that. At 11:30 he changes into swim trunks and scrounges up a scrap of paper from the bedside table. He writes a fresh note— _Lake, midnight. Be late get dunked_ — and slips it under Cas’s door, knocking twice before he can chicken out.

He slips out of the staff cabin and onto the dark grounds, cool grass tickling his bare feet. The lamplight from the cabin paths fades away along the edges of the green, but the moon reflected in the lake's rippling surface guides him. He has the feeling of being watched, a tension in his spine that keeps his eyes shifting to check if Cas is behind him. He should’ve just texted like a normal person.

The end of the dock scrapes the back of his knees as his toes tap anxious ripples into the surface of the water. He shouldn’t have left so early. The waiting’s the hardest part. He expected it to be warmer, and he shivers as his nipples harden with chill. It has to be midnight by now. He’s about to get up and leave when he hears shuffling grass and then careful footsteps on wood. It’s a struggle not to look up.

“I’m early,” Cas says, coming to a stop next to him. “I’d very much like not to get dunked.”

Dean looks up at him then, all innocence. He’s glad to see that Cas has guessed his intention and wore trunks, seeing as he forgot to say so in the note. “You don’t really think I’d dunk a guy who’s just learning to swim, do you?”

“I think if you’re anything like your brother, you don’t make empty threats. Why are we doing this in the middle of the night? This doesn’t seem very safe.” he asks, slipping off his shirt anyway. Dean doesn’t look, but he doesn’t _not_ look either. His gaze gets about as high as his navel before skipping to his face. Cas is watching him too, and Dean hopes he can’t tell the tips of his ears have turned red.

“I figured we’d need the cover of darkness to hide your identity, just in case you were truly awful. Don’t want to humiliate you in front of your adoring fans.”

Cas rolls his eyes and squats down, steadying himself on one hand before dropping into the chest-deep water, hissing at the change in temperature. Dean hides his surprise that he didn’t need more convincing and follows, bracing himself against the cold.

He teaches Cas the same way he and Ellen taught Sam and Jo. Floating, first on his back. Cas stretches out in front of him, long and wide, his stomach taut across the frame of ribs and hips. Dean’s fingers are tentative under his back. Cas's eyes are closed, his breathing measured. His hips sag, and his lower back sinks into Dean's hand before jerking away in surprise.

Dead Man’s Float, Dean’s arms just inches below him, so careful not to touch. His eyes have no such restraint, sliding over every rise and dip of Cas in the brief time before he comes up to breathe. Dean has to stifle a laugh when he recognizes the shape of the lines inked into his skin. _Of fucking course_ Mr. Save the Bees would tattoo their wings across his back.

He shows him the stroke that Sam always called Frogger, child of the eighties that he is. He catches on quick, easily trusting the water to hold him up. Dean figures he has a lot of practice trusting nature. He’s seen how easy he is with his bees. Why should this be any different?

“You’re taking to this way faster than Sam did,” Dean says when they stop to catch their breath in the shallows a ways from the dock.

“You’ve been watching out for him a long time haven’t you?”

“I kinda had to. Dad wasn’t around, Ellen wasn’t our mom. She did right by us, but…”

He trails off and glides smoothly to the raft drifting in the middle of the pond.

“Anyway, you think you could make it over here? It’s not too deep,” he calls across the 15 or so yards.

It’s quiet for a while as Cas swims to the raft in small surges, the occasional splash the only sound. Muscles flutter under his tattoo as if he’s hovering over the water instead of floating in it. Dean hangs onto the ladder as he waits, ready to push off if Cas needs him. He doesn’t, soon grabbing onto the other side and stretching out along the surface of the water.

“You know he’s really happy to have you here, your brother. He missed you.”

Dean looks down. He can feel his lip quivering but smiles around it. “He’s doing me a big favor.”

“I don’t think you understand just how much it means to him that you’re here.” Cas pulls himself vertical, sinks a bit in the water to catch Dean’s eye. “He was so relieved when Ruby quit so that he could ask you to come. Letting him do something for you after everything you did for him growing up, it’s the biggest favor you could possibly do him.”

Dean lets out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well, people taking me in, letting me into their lives… It usually doesn’t turn out well for them. For anybody, really.”

Silent, still water. Silent, still air.

Cas looks stricken, his eyes hollow as he holds Dean’s gaze. His hand is warm despite the cool water and he grips Dean’s shoulder hard as if for emphasis. “Dean. That’s can’t be true.”

The warmth spreads from Cas’s hand up into his throat and burns behind his eyes as he squeezes them shut. He doesn’t remember moving, but Cas's hand is cupping the back of his neck and Dean holds it in place, fingers are clenched around his forearm.

“Because you came here, Sam has his brother back. Jo has an old friend, Charlie has a new one, Kevin’s got someone to talk sense into him. I — ” He chuckles. “The campers have someone to make them homesickness cures.” His voice grows soft and close until he’s pressing their foreheads together, whispering into Dean’s breath.

"You’re doing so much good here."

_But for how long?_

“You’re shivering,” Dean breathes, but doesn’t pull away.

“So are you.”

Dean leans back to look at him and loosens his grip. “Why don’t you head in, grab a shower? I’m gonna hang out here a bit.”

Cas returns an assessing look, then nods. “Don’t stay out here all night.” With a final squeeze, he lets his hand slide off Dean’s shoulder and pushes away across the water.

Dean stays in the water until Cas approaches the shore, watchful of the slightest sign of struggle. He didn’t need to worry. Cas is a quick study. Cas stands and waves, an awkward elbow-level twist of the hand, like he’s not sure how they should part. Dean just watches him go, his gaze lingering appreciatively on the spread of his shoulders, the flex of his well-muscled back and calves.

He heaves himself out of the water and draws his legs in to rest his chin on his knee. It should scare him, this thing with Cas that came out of nowhere and knocked the wind out of him. On some level it does. It’s too soon. Too intense. Too real, even though he’s holding back.

It’s so much more than he deserves.


	8. Chapter 8

Dean wakes to heavy, snarled thoughts barely three hours after he laid down. He went to bed shower-warmed and buzzed on Cas— the emotional hangover that he wakes to is only fitting.

Cas probably only said those things last night because that was what he thought Dean wanted to hear. What if he never intended to get that close? What if he woke up regretting ever reading the note? Dean was beginning to regret writing it.

Last night was completely out of line. There were kids around, at least one of whom tended to be awake in the middle of the night. The last thing they needed to see was two (formerly) trusted adults practically _entwined_ for chrissakes.

Shit. Sam is going to kill him. Sure, he didn’t mind when he caught him checking the guy out, but practically _feeling him up_ … Dean’s pretty sure he would consider that out of line. Everything Cas said about Sam wanting him here— if it wasn’t a lie before it sure is now.

He wants to hear his ring scraping against a metal cap, tapping against cool glass, feel the burn down his throat like scratching an itch, feel his thoughts slow and drift. He needs it.

No. He needs to call Jody.

Before he can change course he’s rushing to Sam’s office and locking the door behind him.

Jody answers on the second ring, wide awake despite the fact that it’s God’s asscrack AM.

“It’s Dean. Listen, Jody, I fucked up. Bad.”

She’s a good listener, saying just enough that he knows she’s there, only interrupting to ask for clarification. It’s theraputic on its own, speaking his thoughts aloud. He clings to the handset, wishing for the comfort of the Roadhouse’s ancient rotary phone that used to settle solid and heavy in his lap. It helped him breathe easier when Dad called, and it would help him again now.

“I just feel like I’ve betrayed their trust,” he sums up.

“Sam’s and Cas’s?”

The lock scrapes and Sam’s head appears, like he heard his name. The look Dean sends him is enough to make him back out again, mumbling something about helping Jo.

“Yeah,” he says, unnecessarily.

Jody sounds like she’s holding back a sigh.

“Dean, this isn’t really about guilt, is it?”

He’s quiet.

“I think you’re scared.”

“Of what?”

“You tell me.”

He can’t put words to it, at least not words he can say out loud. So he doesn’t say anything.

Jody sighs into the phone.

“Fine, I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re scared of rejection. You took a chance, and you don’t want it to blow up in your face.”

Yeah, that about covers it. “I just don’t want to get pushed away again.”

“Okay. And has either of them given you reason to believe that’s going to happen? Any indication?”

He hates being put on the spot like this. His traitorous mind goes blank for examples even as evidence to the contrary surfaces. Sam calling him, inviting him here, forcing him to stay downstairs and socialize. Cas including him in the kids’ science activity. The second beach chair in the clearing. A warm hand on the back of his neck.

And then the day-old liquor taste hits him, and the sight of piled bags and an address so angrily scrawled it could’ve been engraved.

“No,” he says, “but Lisa— “

“I don’t care about Lisa. I mean, I do— of course I do. But Sam and Cas are not her.” She pauses to let that sink in. “You, unfortunately, are still you. With one really important difference. You have a support system now. You have resources and coping methods, and _you’re using them_.”

Dean can’t deny that. He’s talking to Exhibit A.

“Are you ok to hang up, hon? I gotta get breakfast going.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Go talk to them. They care about you.”

He doesn’t want to see anyone right now, so he stays half curled up in Sam’s office chair, idly swiveling, opening and closing drawers at random without really looking inside.

Until a familiar image in the top right drawer catches his eye— Mom, him, Sammy almost like nesting dolls— a crappy copy of the photo he gave his brother before he left for Stanford, barely eighteen. It sits slightly crooked in a sleeve twice its size, attached with peeling tape to the side of the drawer where Sam would see it every time he reached for a clip or a post-it. It must’ve been on there for years, maybe since he got the desk, through the time they weren’t really talking and the months they mostly yelled instead, through all the calls Dean couldn’t remember making even though the log on his phone assured him he had.

Dean closes the drawer and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. Sam is his _brother_. Why is he only beginning to understand what that means?

***

“You better be coming to apologize for making me babysit Sam all morning,” Jo says without turning around when he walks into the kitchen.

He heads to join her at the dish tank, but she points toward the other end of the counter.

“I figured you’d be hungry when you finally showed.”

He fetches it and settles back against the counter to eat.

“Sam said you looked pretty rough this morning.”

Dean takes a bite of his peanut butter bagel, pointedly ignoring her.

“Come on, Dean. The shower running in the middle of the night? Twice? Kind of hard not to notice that when I’m right next door.”

“We didn’t have sex.” _Eye sex maybe_.

“And please don’t tell me if you do.”

A pause. Jo busies herself with the dishes, a brow half-raised.

“I was teaching him to swim,” he admits.

Jo lets go of the sprayer and it swings in his peripheral vision as she turns to gape at him.

“You sobbing romantic.”

“And we talked, and… we got kind of… close.”

A wet punch lands on his shoulder. “I just told you— “

“Not to _that_. Just close. You know what I mean?”

She considers for a minute. “So what’s the problem?”

“I kinda freaked out.”

She nods like she was expecting it.

“If I did… you know… would that break your ‘no booty calls’ rule?”

She finished wiping down the counter and turns to mimic his posture, flinging the rag over her shoulder. “Depends if it’d actually be one. And I’m not the person you need to talk to about that.”

Dean gives her a look, an almost pleading glare, which she has no problem interpreting.

“What are sisters for if not to be infuriatingly wise?”

“You’re not my sister,” he says, but takes the hint, pressing a kiss to the top of her head before he goes.

***

Dean has just settled into Cas’s chair and propped his boots up on the other when the man himself arrives, holding out a banana and what looks like napkin-wrapped toast.

“Jo fed me.”

“Ah, of course.”

He lets his hand drop and shuffles awkwardly at Dean’s side, glancing around the still clearing, looking like he’d much rather be staring down at his shoes. Dean hates to see him like this. He could handle a confused Cas, even a sad one, but this one just looks lost, like someone’s stepped on his Queen.

He takes the food without touching Cas’s skin.

“Thanks.” He taps the other chair with his foot. Cas gets the idea and drags it over to his side, easing into it.

“Your brother has none of your skill in the kitchen.”

“I’m surprised Jo let him touch any of the food at all.”

Cas _hmm_ s like he always does when he doesn’t know what to say. The far-away look of his eyes probably means he was barely listening.

“Cas? Aren’t you supposed to be working?” he prods.

“I came to apologize,” he says by way of answer, looking down at his hands clasped in his lap.

What could he possibly have to apologize for? Dean was the one who’d—

“I crossed a line last night. I understand if you want to avoid me, but I assure you there’s no need. It won’t happen again.”

Dean can’t believe what he’s hearing. Did Cas seriously think that was one-sided?

“Don’t apologize,” he says, and Cas’s eyes snap to his. “I started the whole line-crossing thing, inviting you like that. And you didn’t see me pushing you away, now did you?”

Cas’s forehead scrunches and he shakes his head, uncomprehending. “Then why weren’t you at breakfast?”

Dean finally looks away, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Because I’m an idiot, and I needed some sense talked into me. I mean, I’m still not sure what that was— what this is,” he says motioning between the two of them. _God he sounds like he’s in a fucking soap opera._

“But?” Now it’s Cas’s turn to prod.

“But I don’t… not… want to find out?”

Cas snorts. “High praise.”

Is Dean blushing? He feels like he’s blushing.

“You know what I mean.”

"All right, how do you propose we do that?"

***

Sam runs a hand through his hair and settles back on the bed, careful to keep his boots off the blanket. "Are you sure you wanna stay here?

"What, you didn’t really think I was gonna be witness to you and Amelia’s reunion activities did you?" The door frame digs painfully into his shoulder, but he refuses to step completely into the room. This was supposed to be a drop-in fyi, not a full-blown discussion.

Sam gives him a look that says _oh grow up Dean_. "You don’t even wanna go stay in town with everybody else? I have a deal with the inn, they could put you up no problem."

There’s no way he’s going to take any more of his kid brother’s money.

"Sammy, I’m a big boy, it’s fine. Plus, you said Cas stays here every year. It’s not like I'll be alone."

His big little brother squints at him, an expression he must've picked up from Cas. "Yeah, but he’s _weird_."

"Weirdness loves company."

"No, Dean, that's misery."

“Jeez,” he says, holding up a hand, “Point is, now you can see about getting a refund on that ticket I know you bought me, even though you _know_ I don’t fly.”

Sam’s eyebrows peak in the middle as he readies to protest, but Dean is already pushing off to head to his own room.


	9. Chapter 9

It’s the last official night of camp, and Dean is more relaxed than he would usually let himself be. The atmosphere must be getting to him, the lights across the roof of the barn that were a bitch to string up, fireflies like extensions of them drifting in through the open doors. The kids in their preteen awkward stage, though they haven’t realized it yet, dancing mostly unselfconsciously to the music blaring from the speakers connected to Kevin’s laptop. It’s a scene that would be right at home in any soft-focus montage of summer and nostalgia.

Until Cas appears next to him, at least. That snaps Dean into the present like a soul coming back to its body, the world once again immediate and visceral.

Dean envies him a little, the way he can just slide right in, completely unabashed like he fucking belongs there. (He smothers the voice inside him that says Cas _does_ belong there.) Dean figured he’d feel better once they acknowledged that this thing between them was a _thing_ , but if anything he’s more of a shaking, stuttering mess. It’s like he has a crush that he thought he was hiding well until someone told him it was completely obvious.

Not to mention he’d lost his place in the song, which he completely forgets about when Cas damn near puts himself on display, crossing an ankle over his knee so that dark denim rides up over the smooth leather of his boot. He stretches one arm across the back of the empty chair next to him and hangs the other by its fingertips on Dean’s.

When Dean manages to drag his eyes up to that smirking face he has to bite his cheeks to keep from smiling. Cas looks so dang _pleased_ with himself Dean almost wishes he’d ignored him.

He tries now, upping the twang of the country song he would’ve refused to sing five minutes ago, just on principle. Except now he needs a distraction.

And he wants to make Cas smile for real, make those blinding eyes disappear into his cheeks even if he shakes his head at the same time. Even if Dean can only see it out of the corner of his eye because he refuses to look over.

The performance of it fades away during the next few songs as he relaxes back into the music, watching the crowd of kids and counselors.

Sam’s floppy head towers over everyone else, making his clumsy attempts at dancing all the more obvious. It looks like Christina and Maddie are trying to teach him the washing machine, and he’s freaking awful at it. He looks down when he spins, as if he can steer his hips by sight, and his feet tangle like the overgrown puppy he pretends not to be. He gives a slight bow as Jo applauds, a crumb covered knife in her hand. They were supposed to have the night off, but she stationed herself at the dessert table anyway, grumbling something about not having baked for two days for nothing.

Somewhere in the middle of “500 Miles” Cas’s hand lands heavily on his shoulder and his voice rasps next to his ear as if he were the one who’d been singing all night.

“Would you like to dance? You’re obviously enjoying the music.”

Dean can’t suppress his shiver because, while the context is different, the large warm hand is the same, as is the breath on his neck, and he remembers why he was singing in the first place. Cas was teasing him. Now that he’s calmer, soothed by the rhythm of air in and voice out, he can tease back.

“I gotta admit, I’m more of a table-banging guy,” he says, hiding a half smile when Cas sputters, dripping punch down his shirt. He’d wash it for him later. He’s surprisingly good at stain removal, thanks to Sam’s childhood inability to get food from his plate to his mouth.

“Uh, table drumming, I meant.” He taps out a beat on the edge of a table, as if to demonstrate, but Cas knows better, pinning a glare on him until he can feel the tips of his ears turn red.

And then redder, when Cas stands and strips off his shirt, revealing the thin cotton tee underneath. Dean’s got to admire the way it drapes over his back and gathers on the swell of his ass when he crosses the dance floor to offer Jo his hand.

Not one to be left sitting and staring, Dean wanders over to the table where he saw Krissy dealing cards earlier. He swings around the empty chair between Charlie and Adam and plops down, straddling it with his back to the dance floor. Krissy’s frantically shushing Charlie, who stares back wide-eyed over a hand of three nines, a ten, and a queen.

“I don’t care that he’s your partner, if he can’t keep track of trump you just have to deal with it.”

She’s either very brave or very stupid to try to teach them like this.

“Need an assist? You can’t really teach this on loner hands, especially with two noobs.” He nudges Charlie and smiles, and her panicked expression calms. For what might be the first time, he’s happy to have dried out in what seemed like the Euchre capital of the world.

“This one,” Krissy jabs a thumb at Adam, “said he knew how to play.”

“I do. It’s just been a while.” His protest might as well bounce off of her.

“It’s like riding a bike, you can’t forget no matter how long it’s been.” At least that’s what Victor promised when he taught Dean. There wasn’t much to do besides talk, read, and play cards, and he treated it like he was imparting a vital life skill instead of a pastime.

“Redeal, Kris. We gotta teach these whippersnappers how to have some good old-fashioned analog fun.”

She rolls her eyes but obeys, whipping out cards in pairs and trios.

Charlie catches on quicker than Adam, who it turns out was thinking of another game altogether, and soon the conversation falls away from the game itself, until Charlie gasps and jumps a little in her chair.

“Guys! You’re all staying in town, right? We could totally have a tournament!”

Then her brain catches up to her mouth and she turns to Dean.

“Oh, you’re probably going back to Texas, too, aren’t you?”

He debates letting them think that, but there’s a chance someone would see him with Jody in town.

“Actually, I’m gonna be around,” he says. “But not at the inn,” he rushes to add when he sees visions of sleepovers and gaming nights fogging Charlie’s eyes. “There’s some stuff I wanna take care of around here. I might stop by, but no promises.”

Adam and Krissy are indifferent, but Charlie’s face falls a bit before her eyes alight on something behind him, widening.

“ _Oh_ …” She whips out her phone and swipes furiously, her cards forgotten face down on the table. The string of heart and crown emoticons across the top of the screen must mean she’s texting Dorothy. He wishes she’d picked a better time to have an epiphany, maybe when there aren’t people waiting for her to take her turn. He’d like to keep this quiet, at least for the sugar glass veneer of professionalism he’s trying not to break.

He doesn’t try to hide the fact that he’s reading over her shoulder, and thank God that he is, because she’s getting way ahead of herself.

“No I _will not_ text you when it happens,” he hisses. “ _If_ it does, that’s private. Oh, and that’s not even the reason I’m staying, since you didn’t bother to ask.”

She looks up, skeptical.

“Not the whole reason anyway. This was the best option for a combination of reasons.”

“Ding ding ding,” Charlie whispers.

He rolls his eyes. “Is that supposed to be your bullshit detector or your gay-dar?”

“It doesn’t even matter at this point.”

***

“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to come stay with us?” Sam asks, thumping down the stairs with a stuffed duffel half his size. “Amelia really wants to meet you. You still have time to pack."

Dean looks up from the paperback he has splayed on the arm of the chair. “No thanks. Spare me the domestic bliss. I can meet her when you’re not in reunion-slash-shag-while-we-can mode.”

Only Sam can smile and frown at the same time. “No one says shag anymore.”

“I was trying to be delicate.”

A snort comes from the couch, which Cas is hogging, an out of date newspaper spread across his chest.

“You can say fuck, Dean. Your baby brother is all grown up,” he snarks from behind the Arts & Leisure section, which Dean suspects he is only pretending to read.

“Maybe it wasn’t him I was worried about,” Dean teases back, leaning forward to catch his eye and wink. He’s rewarded with a face full of crumpled crossword.

“I appreciate your consideration, but I assure you I am familiar with the concept, in theory and practice.”

Sam misses the significant look he sends Dean and laughs around his last bite of strawberry yogurt. He chucks the container in the trash and grabs the duffle, heading for the door.

“Come on, Jeeves.”

Dean rolls his eyes but follows, wondering out loud, “What about ‘bumping uglies’?”

At that Sam makes a strangled sound halfway between disgust and amusement, but Cas laughs in earnest, tucking his chin down into his chest, jaw softening, eyes crinkling. It’s a good look on him.

Sam doesn’t try to convince him on the drive to the airport, doesn’t say much really, but when Dean gives him a half-hug and tells him to be careful, he says “Yeah, you too,” with a significant brow crinkle. Dean suspects he isn’t just talking about his driving.

On the way back it occurs to him that he’s going to be alone with Cas for a week. A week in which anything could happen, amazing or disastrous. He regrets his decision to stay for exactly half a second before shaking off the feeling. He’s nervous, no doubt, but as far as he remembers nerves are a good thing. They mean there’s something at stake.


	10. Chapter 10

Dean uses the last of the eggs for omelettes, and the milk has gone sour, which means that the fridge is empty, and the boxes of cereal in the cupboards are useless. Time to restock.

“I’d go alone,” Cas says, “but let’s be honest— you’ll probably do most of the cooking anyway.”

“Taking advantage,” Dean mumbles, but follows him outside anyway.

He steers Cas away from his embarrassment of a car and toward the Impala. Cas belongs in a car like Baby, sleek and powerful, not that rusted-out deathtrap. In any case, he'd have to make sure to give it a tune up before he let Cas drive off to Oregon in it.

Cas runs his hand over Baby’s roof appreciatively, almost like petting an animal. Inside, the petting doesn’t stop, and Dean stiffens when Cas runs his fingers lightly over the radio controls. He doesn’t push or turn anything, just brushes them gently, an introduction.

Cas navigates, his rough voice a fitting complement to Plant's shrieking softly through the speakers.

The store is oddly empty for a Sunday mid-morning, Dean thinks, as he unfolds the list scribbled on the back of a gas receipt.

This is the second time he's deciphered Cas’s smudged writing and odd abbreviations, and it feels like everything has changed since he read that first list asking for vinegar and baking soda and measuring tools. He’s standing in a grocery store with Cas, like something out of a surreal dream where they have a dog and a mortgage.

“Dean?” Cas is looking at him expectantly. “The list?”

Cas works through the list methodically, consulting it before he puts anything in the cart. It turns out he has a taste for boxed mac and bagged noodle dishes. He gives some excuse about college having permanently altered his palate, but Dean figures he just never learned to cook.

He can't hold back his teasing when Cas plunks a full gallon of French Vanilla coffee creamer into the cart.

“Parents gone for a long weekend, trying out the grownup drinks? I think I saw bendy straws on aisle 4.”

Cas glowers. “I believe the _grownup drinks_ are on the other side of the store.”

A few minutes later Cas holds a package in each hand while he debates whether plain ground beef or meatloaf mix would make better goulash. Meanwhile Dean is shivering, hugging himself for warmth as he curses Cas’s inability to _just decide already_ , then wonders if this is his punishment for making fun of Cas's creamer. Either way, he was thinking of early July heat, not the chill of a meat cooler when he got dressed that morning, and now he regrets not grabbing a flannel.

"Fancy meeting you here. A pleasant surprise, I must say."

The speaker stands behind Cas, a squat man with a receding hairline and wide, round eyes.

Cas mouths a curse, then turns to aim a polite but disinterested look at the man. "I’m here every summer, Crowley, as you well know."

This _Crowley_ flicks his eyes over Cas in a way that Dean does not like. What is this balding, pug-faced slimeball (in a full suit, no less) doing looking him over like that? It’s like the guy has x-ray vision or something and can see right into him. Whatever he sees is invisible to Dean, and it worries him. That’s a look that speaks of shared history. Judging by the careful tone of Cas’s voice, it’s not good history.

"Well, I was beginning to worry since you hadn’t made an appearance in town." He gives Dean an appraising once-over, and Dean curses thin cotton and perky nipples. "Though I'll bet I can guess why. Does the boss know you’re shacking up with the help?"

Dean’s wearing a Camp Campbell staff shirt, one of many he’s mysteriously acquired in the past three weeks. He bristles, but Cas is cool as ever, even cold.

"Excuse us, we have things to do."

He grabs a package of meat without looking and throws it in the cart before wheeling around. His cheek twitches at the little hop Crowley takes to keep his toes from being run over.

They turn down an aisle, out of sight of the pug bastard, and Cas deflates, leaning heavily on the cart. Dean finds himself pressed to his side, a hand spread across his hunched back.

“Cas?” His voice comes out too loud, too worried.

“I should’ve known something like that would happen.”

“Something like what? Who was that guy?

Cas shakes his head where it hangs low over his clasped hands. “Later. I don’t want to talk about it while he might still be around. Let’s just finish the list and leave.”

So they do, mechanically, grabbing items and checking them off the list without much discussion, though Dean grabs a ready-to-bake pumpkin pie just because. After a brief squabble over who’s going to pay, which Dean wins by slapping a couple of twenties on the counter, they head back to the empty camp.

Cas slumps in the passenger seat, elbow propped on the door, finger and thumb pinching and releasing his bottom lip. After a while he leans over and turns down the radio. Dean would protest, but if Cas is ready to talk, he wants to hear it, _Houses of the Holy_ be damned.

“We had a thing, a few years ago. A summer romance, I guess you could call it. He helped Sam get the place off the ground, so he was around a lot the first couple of years, and we hit it off. I spent a lot of time in town that summer. Back in time for breakfast, then I’d leave again after dinner, unless I was needed here.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.” Cas who is utterly devoted to those kids, to Sam and Jo and Charlie, to his _bees_ for chrissakes.

Cas shakes his head and looks down. They’ve turned onto the tree-lined dirt road that leads to Camp Campbell, and shadows flit through the interior of the car.

“It wasn’t. The rest of the staff noticed, of course. Sam was glad I was happy, but Jo told me to be careful. I thought she was being overprotective. I should’ve listened to her.”

They pull up next to the Continental, and Dean shuts the engine off. Cas doesn’t move, though, so neither does he.

“He wanted more from me than I was willing to give, and he just assumed that I would be. When I told him that, he shot back everything I’d ever told him, all twisted around. I was useless and needy and I could never make a difference to anyone, that I should be grateful he— “

Cas breaks off and stares down into his lap for a moment before getting out and grabbing the bags. Dean follows, protectiveness flaring in his chest at the idea of that sick fuck hurting Cas with words he wouldn’t even repeat. It makes him want to get back in the car and search every inch of town for the son of a bitch.

Cas leaves half their haul on the ground while he unlocks the door, and Dean scoops it up as he follows him into the kitchen, relieved to have something to do with the pent-up anger twitching in his muscles.

Cas places boxes in the cupboard with such control Dean wonders if he’d rather be smashing them.

“We don’t have to talk about it any more if you don’t want to, but if I ever see that dick again, I’m gonna break his face,” he says, jaw tight, half turning from stocking the fridge.

Cas blows air through his nose and shakes his head, not looking back at Dean, but he trails a hand across his back on his way upstairs. A few minutes later he leaves again, white canvas slung over his shoulders.


	11. Chapter 11

“I’m thinking shirts vs skins,” Dean suggests early the next afternoon.

He gets in a few practice dribbles before Cas responds, “There’s only two of us.”

“So, skins vs skins?” His face starts to ache from holding back a smile, so he lets it beam full-force.

“You know, if you wanted to see me shirtless again all you had to do was ask,” Cas teases, still in the good mood Dean found him in late that morning, humming tunelessly as he puttered around with the politics section and a mug of blond coffee. He winks as he claws at the back of his shirt, and it inches up revealing the vee of his hipbones and his waist where it flares into his chest. He turns to drop it in the grass, and Dean almost drops the ball, struck by the full force of his ink, strong black lines sweeping out across his broad back, highlighting the muscles beneath. Seeing it in semi-darkness came nowhere near to doing it justice.

Cas catches him staring and returns the appraisal. Dean scrambles to catch up, hoping he doesn’t notice the little extra cushion that accumulated around his navel sometime after he moved in with Lisa. He has no shortage of confidence, but Cas is a sight, even with the farmer’s tan. He feels downright average in comparison. Cas is still looking at him, and it makes him antsy, so he retrieves the ball and dashes to the hoop, Cas’s footsteps seconds behind him.

Two games later, the hot sun has taken its toll, and Cas flops in the grass, sweaty hair plastered to his forehead, chest heaving and flushed with exertion or fresh sunburn. Dean stands over him, ball pinned between his hip and forearm, and tries to look casual.

“What, you’re done already? I’m barely sweating.”

He can feel as much as see Cas’s eyes moving over him, as if to verify. He flushes at the attention, and there’s a pleasant swell of interest in his gut.

“Good. I’m taking the first shower,” Cas says as he gets up to head back to the house.

“You know, I’m sensing a pattern here,” Dean calls ahead. Not that he’s complaining. He gets to follow behind and take in all of Cas without worrying about getting caught. Though that was probably the bastard’s intention. If that long look was any indication, he knows exactly what he does to Dean. At that thought interest turns to very real need, and he thanks whatever gods there may be that he wore loose shorts.

***

He vaguely registers the bathroom door opening and thudding footsteps in the hall. Dean is far gone, gasping as he thrusts into his own fist, the slick sound unmistakable. He barely hears Cas’s knocks but his voice— raspy and hesitant— cuts through the haze of arousal. He can feel muscles beginning to clench deep in his abdomen, but he squeezes the base of his cock to keep his orgasm at bay. He hopes his voice doesn’t come out strangled as he answers. He doesn’t remember what he says, just hopes it wasn’t _Go away I’m jerking it thinking about you._ Or worse, _Stay_.

He tries to get back into it, strokes accelerating as tries to drift back into fantasy— Cas pressing him down into the mattress, rutting against him and taking them both in hand, all lips and tongue and teeth at his neck, Cas in a bed that smells like both of them, hands in Dean’s hair, hips bucking as Dean takes him into his mouth— but his mind just isn’t in it anymore. That was Cas fresh from the shower on the other side of the door, probably wrapped in nothing but a towel and that sharp blue scent. Dean has just spent hours in close proximity with him, has felt his sweat-slicked skin against his own, his strong arms flexing around him as they grappled for the ball. He’s tired of fantasy. He doesn’t want it. He wants _Cas_.

He pulls his shorts back on and a shirt for good measure. Dean figures that Cas knew exactly what he heard and exactly the source of it. It’s not a huge leap to work out— first they’re shirtless and practically eyefucking, and not even an hour later Dean locks himself in his room like he's just discovered his cock. He can guess what it will look like if he goes to Cas panting with want, smelling of sex and sweat— he might as well _try_ for presentable if he wants Cas to take him seriously.

He won’t push, though, Cas or himself. All he wants is to be near Cas, the real one, to look into his eyes and breathe in his scent.

Cas opens the door already dressed in rumpled jeans and an Oregon State University tee, his hair sticking up in places like it’s been towel-dried. He pushes the door wide, an invitation, but Dean couldn’t move even if Cas took his hand and pulled.

His hands fidget in his pockets and push against the fabric of the shorts, and his eyes can’t keep still, wandering from Cas’s face to his elegant neck, to his hands hanging plumb next to powerful thighs.

When he finds Cas’s face again, it has an almost satisfied expression, like he’s just remembered something that had been nagging at him.

Nonetheless, he seems surprised when Dean reaches out and puts a hand on his cheek. He leaves it there a moment, feeling the framework of bones, the twitching muscles, the rough stubble.

This is real.

Cas is all wide eyes and parted lips and anticipation as Dean brushes his thumb along his bottom lip. The skin is dry but soft, and Dean can feel his breath coming in little pants like he’s trying not to breathe at all. He leans in until their foreheads are touching and then their noses, and Cas is still all eyes looking up at him like he can’t fucking believe what’s happening.

“Can I kiss you?”

Cas nods against him, and he means it to be a gentle get-to-know-you kiss but Cas is zero to sixty, sliding hands around the sides of his face and pressing into him. He gasps into Dean’s mouth when he feels him hard against his stomach.

Dean pulls back to say “I swear I didn’t come for that. This, “ he clarifies, with a kiss like a comma, “yes. _Hell_ yes, but—”

Cas interrupts him with a kiss and slides his hands down to Dean’s hips to hold him there. Dean loses track of time— it’s no wonder with Cas’s lips and tongue demanding against his and his hands anchored to his hips— but eventually Dean has to break it or they might fuck right then. He wanted tangible, but he needs to process.

Dean just wants to bury his face in Cas’s neck and catch his breath. So he does, slipping his arms under Cas’s to wrap around his waist. Hands stroke his back and he is enveloped in real, honest-to-God _Cas_. Dean surfaces to see him in vivid technicolor, eyes dark and slowly blinking, cheeks twin smudges of pink, lips swollen and slick.

Dean carefully, carefully kisses him, like he meant to in the first place. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to stop grinning.

“I’m gonna take that shower now.”

***

When Dean comes downstairs freshly spent and relaxed, Cas is heating up leftovers on the stove even though Dean has reminded him on several occasions that they do have a microwave. Cas always shrugs and insists it tastes better the old fashioned way. He loads their plates while Dean pours them both iced tea, and they settle in together to eat.

It’s the most relaxed he can remember ever being in Cas’s presence, he realizes as he gently bumps their knees together. It must have something to do with the kiss, like it released the spring coiled between them. He’s glad for it. If he’s this at ease just from one kiss, he can’t imagine how he’ll feel after more. Except so far Cas hasn’t given him any clues either way about the possibility of more.

“Cas?”

He looks up, eyebrows raised.

“That wasn’t just a one-time thing, right? Earlier?”

Cas stops mid-chew and swallows audibly. “If the way I kissed you gave you the impression I only wanted to do it once, I did it wrong.”

The one that follows is barely a press of lips, a promise of more to come.

The rest of the meal passes in contented silence save the noise of the radio stolen from the mess, volume too low to pick out the tune. Dean boosts it slightly while he washes up, waving away Cas's offer to help. There are few dishes and only a couple of songs play before he's settled comfortably against Cas’s side with his paperback propped up on his thigh.

"That's terrible for the binding," Cas admonishes, nudging Dean's arm with his elbow.

Dean glances at the way the front cover curls back on itself, then looks back to Cas. "I feel like a nerd holding it the other way."

Cas's scowl turns incredulous, arguments lining up behind his eyes, but Dean cuts in before he can voice any of them.

"Alright here's the deal." He turns to wedge an arm behind Cas and pull him against his chest, any hesitation he would have felt put to rest by Cas’s earlier reassurance. Messy hair tickles the side of his neck, and his hand comes to rest low on Cas's hip as he continues. "I will hold your books the nerd way if you hold mine the cool way."

Cas's head knocks against his jaw as it shakes. "No, Dean, I respect your belongings, even if you refuse to."

His hand slides over Dean’s, locking their fingers together as he pulls Dean's arm tighter around his waist. A fizzy, giddy feeling rises behind Dean's sternum, and he rests his head on top of Cas's.

"Nerd."

"Your nerd."

His chest constricts as if to contain the ever-expanding feeling that Cas’s words set off.

_His_.

***

The next day Dean browses Cas's extensive DVD collection while Cas sings off-key and off-beat in the kitchen. He chooses one he’s never heard of and pops it in the player before padding into the kitchen to burn some microwave popcorn for Cas.

He looks like home, sleeves rolled up and wrists sudsy. Dean steps in close behind him while the microwave hums, pinning his hips against the counter and trailing kisses up the back of his neck.

"Need help?" he asks, muffled against Cas's skin.

Cas shivers and shakes his head as the microwave beeps distantly. Dean grumbles but steps away to put the popcorn in a bowl and take it to the couch, a hand dragging across Cas's back as he passes.

Cas still smells like dish soap when he kneels over Dean's lap and presses him back into the couch cushions. The movie and popcorn are all but forgotten as his hands stroke Dean's sides under his t-shirt and Dean’s learn every dip and plane of his back.


	12. Chapter 12

Cas doesn’t notice him standing at the edge of the clearing, and he’s so deep in concentration Dean dreads announcing himself. A focused Cas isn’t careful so much as deliberate— he knows exactly what he’s doing and how to go about it. Methodical, even, as he pulls out frames for inspection and smoothly slots them back in. He only sees Dean when he finishes one box and turns toward the other. His confusion shows through the netting, and he inclines his head toward their chairs, squint deepening when Dean shakes his head.

“I’m going into town for a while, do you need anything?” Dean asks, resting a hand on Cas’s waist when he finally walks over to him.

“Papers. All of them.”

Dean laughs. “News junkie.”

He kisses him through the scratchy netting and Cas’s eyes are so bright with laughter that he does it again.

He pulls in next to the cruiser marked _Sheriff_ right on time, even after stopping in a gas station on the edge of town to buy a copy of every paper they carry.

The diner’s interior is funky in a good way, all rounded windows and wood paneling beneath murals that stretch entire walls. There’s not a chair in the place, only booths and barstools.

Jody’s already seated, in uniform as promised, at an undersized booth next to a window. She wears a pleasantly expectant expression, like she should be visiting an elementary school, not meeting a recovering alcoholic for lunch.

He’s nervous. He shouldn’t be. She stands to greet him and when he holds out a hand to shake she scoffs and pulls him into firm hug.

“Sorry, son, handshakes’re for strangers.”

She’s strong, not that that should surprise him. When she finally releases him, he sinks into the booth feeling deboned as a waitress who looks too young to even drink coffee, let alone work in a diner, comes by to take their orders.

Jody is even easier to talk to in person, where the warmth in her voice spreads to her face and her whole bearing. Within minutes he’s giving her the rundown of the calmer parts of his past few weeks.

“I’m glad things are going good for you. At least, I’m assuming so, since you haven’t called.” She takes a sip of black coffee, a sharp, watchful look in her eye. He wonders if something he did or said tipped her off or if she’s just that good at reading him. Reading people in general, probably.

“Something kind of happened, but it wasn’t a crisis. It didn’t even have to do with… that.”

Her mug thunks on the tabletop. “My ears are open.”

Dean thinks about it for a minute. It almost feels like he’d be giving away something of Cas’s if he told her. That awful feeling, though, the one that wanted him to hurt Crowley— that was all him. It scared him as much as the last time he had to call Jody because of feelings that he didn’t know how to handle, that he just wanted to make disappear.

“We— Cas and I— ran into… his ex, I guess. And he looked at Cas like he owned him or something, and the way Cas reacted… it wasn’t good. And then he told me what happened between them, the Cliff’s Notes version anyway, and it was extra not good. I wanted to hurt him, Jody. Turn the car around and find him and cave his face in.”

“So you really like this Cas, huh?” She doesn’t even bother to look alarmed, just swipes a fry through ketchup.

Dean goggles at her. “Really? That’s all you got out of that?”

“No. You had an impulse, and you controlled it just fine. There’s nobody alive who hasn’t wanted to get back at the person who hurt someone they love. What I’m really interested in is the feeling behind it.”

And just like that she’s off, asking probing questions about a guy like one of those cool moms on TV. Seriously, between her and Jo and Charlie they could have a regular girl-talk gabfest.

That’s not to say he doesn’t answer her. He’s just not at all proud of it, especially when they talk through the rest of their club sandwiches and the apple pie with cheese that she forces on him. (He waits until she leaves before he gets one to go for Cas).

***

They’re on the couch relaxing in their usual position, Dean’s arm looped over Cas’s shoulder, their hands entwined on his chest. Dean isn’t looking, but when he feels a finger rubbing up and down one of his own he knows exactly what’s caught Cas’s attention.

If this… whatever it is… is going to continue, it’s probably time that Cas knew. Dean steels himself for the conversation he never wanted to have, the words halting.

“The ring? Was a bottle opener. I came here straight out of rehab.”

He didn’t think it would be that hard to say, but his hand is shaking. Chapped lips and warm breath skim his knuckles.

“What happened?” Cas breathes.

Dean snorts. “What do you think happened? I was a drunk, now I’m not.”

“Dean, talk to me,” Cas pleads, tightening his hold on Dean’s hand.

“There’s no one thing, you know? How can I point to one thing and say ‘That. That’s what fucked me up, what turned me into a fuck-up.’”

Cas sighs. “You’re not a fuck-up.”

Dean unlaces their fingers and leans forward, pushing a hand through his hair to rest his head on his hand.

“You know you can tell me anything,” Cas says, an invitation, and Dean doesn’t need to turn his head to know that he means it. He can hear the bare sincerity in his voice. It’s one of the things Dean loves about him— he doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. Can’t, probably. Cas shifts to curl around an arm around his waist, both buoy and anchor. He didn’t know he needed it, and he leans into the support.

Where to start, though? Ash, Sammy, Dad, Lisa— it seemed like everything happened at once, just this chaos of crap he couldn’t even make sense of, and it was his life.

“Traditional Winchester coping mechanism, I guess. Sam told you our dad died a while back, right? After that I just… I couldn’t stay there and work on cars like nothing happened. So I took off. Left the shop to the guys and found a girl I knew from when we lived in Michigan. Lisa, the one with the kid. She took me in, was good to me.

“I don’t think I was even with them a few months when I get this call, this voicemail actually, from one of the guys at the shop. And all it says is, ‘Ash is dead, KIA. Make sure Sam knows.’ And Ash, he was so smart, you know. A genius, really. He shouldn’t have even been there, should’ve been, I don’t now, figuring out teleportation or something. And then Sammy had to hear over the phone that his best friend was dead, and I hadn’t heard him cry like that since the first time we got dropped off at Ellen’s.”

He sinks a little lower into Cas’s side as the memory slams into him— the keening in his brother’s voice when he asked about funeral arrangements, his own rage at this bright kid’s death, like he was just some grunt to be traded for a star-spangled box.

“I don't remember when it started, maybe it was always there. It was like I couldn’t breathe without it, like I was gulping air but it just kept getting harder to breathe. People always say time heals. It doesn’t. All it does is give you time to think, to get pissed. Time to realize that none of it makes any damn sense.”

“Why didn’t you go back to them?” Cas’s whisper is barely audible, as if he could speak without disturbing the air.

"I barely remember it. I was blitzed,” Dean admits, trying to call up the memory, to force the blur to hold still.

“I know I came home— drove home— like that. I think I yelled at them, don't know what about. Of all the people I never wanted to hurt.” There’s burning behind his eyes and he heaves a breath. “I woke up on the couch, bags packed. She left a note, a number, told me to never show my face at her door again.”

They let it hang there, that moment, as Dean collects himself.

“Why? Would you rather I didn’t come here?” His voice wobbles over the attempted joke, and it comes out needy, insecure.

Cas gathers Dean against him, arms a vice around his chest. He’s so warm, and his voice is harsh and hot in Dean’s ear.

“Never. Don’t ever think that. Not for a second.” He presses a kiss after each denial. Dean’s temple, behind his ear, the corner of his jaw. “Everything you just told me, everything that’s happened— it’s not all you are.”

Dean opens his mouth to disagree.

“No, I’m not done. None of that can change who you are fundamentally. You take care of people. You care about everyone around you. You know exactly what to say to every kid here. Even the staff look up to— “

This time it’s Cas who gets cut off, when Dean turns and presses their lips together. It’s awkward, half-kneeling, half-standing, like he’s going to crawl right over him. He doesn’t care. He just tightens his fingers in Cas’s hair, pouring into the kiss every ounce of relief and gratitude and affection he has for this man who has such faith in him. Cas’s lips meet his surge for surge and soon they’re gasping breaths in the microseconds between contact, drinking in the warm, dark scent of each other’s skin.

Dean begins to shake and strong hands grip his hips and draw him close, a knee on each side of the man beneath him. Those hands slip around Dean’s back, under his shirt, and trail up his spine, leaving his skin tingling in their wake. He catches Cas’s bottom lip between his teeth and flicks his tongue along the sensitive skin. Cas goes still under him save the labored rise and fall of his chest. Dean releases him, drawing back to flash a sly grin.

He slides lower to trail open-mouthed kisses down the slope of Cas’s throat. His teeth find the juncture of neck and shoulder, and Cas shivers, digging his nails into Dean’s shoulders.

His arousal jerks against the crease of Dean’s thigh and Dean rolls his hips, teasing laughter becoming a groan when Cas’s erection nudges his own through their jeans. Cas is tense beneath him, muscle straining as Dean repeats the motion, for whose benefit he doesn’t know. Those electric eyes latch onto his when he looks up. Whoever decided blue was a cool color was fucking blind.

Dean needs more. He pulls away and sinks to his knees between Cas's legs. His shirt catches on the upholstery and rides up as Dean pulls his hips to the edge of the couch, exposing the skin just above his jeans to Dean’s eager exploration with mouth and fingertips.

Cas can't keep his hands out of Dean's hair, where they tug and massage and finally pull him back up for kisses and whispered praise. The words swirl like a whirlpool through his core, and he wants to dive right into it and let it drag him down.

Dean takes the opportunity to open Cas's fly and palm him over his boxers. He breathes a curse through clenched teeth that sounds a whole lot like _fuck yes_ — Dean's thoughts exactly.

When the grip on his hair loosens he sits back on his heels and hooks his fingers over the double layer of waistband, asking permission with a look. And Cas— holy shit— Cas is live erotica— hair wild, breathing shallow. There’s a mark on his stomach Dean doesn’t remember leaving. And then, in a motion that will live forever in Dean's spank bank, he lifts his hips for Dean to drag his clothing out of the way. All that registers is Cas's ass, firm against his fingers, and resistance at the front of his boxers as Dean tugs blindly to pull them down. He is caught in Cas’s eyes, and he doesn't dare look away.

Dean's palms brush across the bare tops of Cas’s thighs, drawing a desperate inhale, and cross the patch of short coarse hair to encircle the base of his cock. Cas’s face crumples with a sound like the wind has been knocked out of him as Dean’s lips slide over the head, tasting skin and salt. He doesn’t care that the floor is oak beneath the thin rug or that he’s probably going to strain his jaw from lack of practice, because it’s better than any fantasy he could’ve come up with.

He doesn’t bother to set a pace or even use his hands. He’s far more concerned with cataloguing reactions— the twitching abdomen when he strokes lazily, letting the length glide over his tongue— rocking hips when his lips circle just the head. His own hips buck against nothing when Cas moans his appreciation of deftly applied tongue.

“I want to be inside you.” A gasp, throaty and voiceless.

Cas's words roll through him to settle heavy in his groin. He stills, then pulls off to look at him with mock contemplation, a hand lazily stroking the spit-slicked shaft.

“Technically…”

Without breaking eye contact he takes him as far as he can in one go. Cas is too thoroughly blown to respond, just bucks his hips then pulls Dean off and up.

He plucks at the hem of Dean's shirt, a wordless request, before yanking his own over his head, and then makes quick work of Dean’s fly. Cas steadies him as he steps out of his jeans to stand in nothing but grey boxer briefs.

He lets Cas lead the way to the first door off the landing and push him down onto the narrow bed. So narrow, in fact, that they can barely move, but it doesn’t matter. When he pulls Cas on top of him there’s nowhere he’d rather be, because all of Cas is touching all of him.

His cock is twitching in anticipation, and Cas must notice because he gets a purposeful look and kisses down Dean’s neck and chest, stubble scratching, and it’s that more than his lips that makes Dean shiver. His nails scratch twin trails that follow the path of his lips and then he’s dragging Dean’s boxers off, replacing them with a hand digging into his hip while the other flattens around the base of his cock.

Cas’s full, pink lips open to take him in and he is lost. Lost in the warmth of Cas’s mouth, the slow pulls of his lips and the way his tongue flicks over the head when he draws back. Lost in the building pressure as Cas’s mouth works over him. Then the warmth is gone and Cas is propping himself up on one elbow to seal his mouth over Dean’s nipple as his free hand scrabbles in the bedside table drawer. Teeth graze lightly, and Dean thrusts up against Cas’s stomach, clutching at his shoulders. A desperate, nasal groan escapes Cas, and he shifts to slide their lips together, open and needy, as something smooth and cool drops onto the bed and rolls against Dean’s side. There’s a skittering sound and then a sharp prick against his skin that makes Dean jump. He feels around, and his hand closes over a small foil square. Eyebrows raised, he pulls away and holds it up.

Cas looks back at him, unsure. “Unless you don’t want— ?”

“No, yeah, this is good,” Dean interrupts, while his blood-deprived brain fumbles over why Cas has them in the first place. He stops caring as Cas recaptures his lips and ruts against him.

Then he’s lost in the sweep of hands over his hips and the backs of his thighs when they push his legs up over Cas’s shoulders.

“Dean?”

Lubed fingers circle his entrance, and it’s all he can do to gasp out a strained “Yes.”

Gorgeous and obscene, he presses hot, open-mouthed kisses anywhere he can reach— across Dean’s inner thighs, along the underside of his shaft. Dean is transfixed by the sight until Cas’s fingers press just right, and his head falls back, hands grasping at the outsides of his own thighs.

If it weren't for the change in angle of those talented fingers he might not even notice his feet being placed back on the mattress.

The fingers disappear, and Cas’s whole torso drags up the sensitive skin of Dean’s cock. The lips on his are gentle but firm, as is the blunt press of Cas’s cock against his ass. Dean nods, half breaking the kiss.

Cas pushes into him, gasping against his lips, and soon the hand that guided his cock strokes Dean’s in time with his measured thrusts. He wraps his legs around Cas’s waist with whispered curses and urges him deeper, faster, hands stroking up and down his sides, across the valley of his spine, through his hair.

Dean spills over Cas’s hand with a groan, clenching around him. Cas stills, impossibly blue eyes impossibly wide. He grinds out a few desperate thrusts until he’s coming too, bowing into the crook of Dean’s neck before collapsing against his side.

Their lips find each other again, lazy and exhausted. Cas doesn’t seem to mind or even notice the mess, and Dean is glad. He’d rather neither of them ever moved again.

Cas does, though, rolling onto his back and flinging the used condom in the direction of the trash.

“If we stay like this one of us will end up on the floor,” he slurs, one arm already hanging loosely over the side of the bed. His other nudges sleepily at Dean's shoulder. "Come on, I forgot the couch pulls out."

Dean reaches over Cas to pull his arm around him, turning onto his side as a rebuttal.

“Not like this. And it smells like you.” Dean wouldn’t be sure he even heard the last mumbled words if it weren’t for the hitch in his breathing and the arm tightening around his waist.

***

Dean wakes early the next morning to stiff knees, whether from scrunching into Cas's smaller frame or kneeling on barely cushioned hardwood he can’t be sure. He's warm, though. So is Cas's breath against his back, and the arm slung over his hip.

From his vantage point as the little spoon he can take in all of Cas’s room. He was too distracted the few times he'd come in here before, last night and the other day when they’d first kissed.

A crossword half filled in red ink caps the neat stack of newspapers under the bedside table, whose drawer still gapes from Cas’s distracted search. All that’s topped off with a mug likely days old, no longer smelling of the sweet coffee Cas likes.

He stretches, setting off a string of grumbles from behind him. Dean pretends not to hear, just turns over and pulls him to his chest because it feels damn good. He drifts off again to the feeling of an arm sliding around him.

Hours later, Dean wakes up alone and spends all of two minutes feeling disappointed before Cas comes padding back in freshly showered and dressed in lounge pants and his Bermuda Triangle tee. Dean smiles at the memory of their first meeting and congratulates himself on not assuming the worst about Cas's absence.

“You showered without me?” he absolutely does not whine.

“It was all business, I promise.” Cas leans down for a chaste kiss and runs a hand through Dean’s hair. “Go clean up and then come downstairs.”

Dean obeys, striding past him wearing only a smirk, which earns him a slap on the ass. In the bathroom he inhales Cas's scent, an inferior version of the one that permeated the bed. He was right that it smelled better against skin, but he had no idea how powerful it would be mixed with sweat and musk and sleep. He doesn't linger, and heads downstairs after a detour to his room to pull on a t-shirt and fresh boxers, flinging his robe over them as he goes.

He arrives to a changed living room.The pull out bed is made up with creased green sheets, and all of their pillows are lined up against the back of the makeshift headboard.

“What’s all this?”

Cas snaps a DVD case shut and turns to look at him, crow’s feet just suggesting a smile.

“Film education. A classic.”

Dean tries to peek at the box but Cas quickly hides it behind his back.

“Is it at least in color?”

“Yes. You know it never hurts to broaden one's experience.” Cas is actively suppressing a smile now.

“My film experience is not narrow. It’s focused.” He perches on the edge of the thin mattress.

Cas nods. “Focused. On, I don’t know, Harrison Ford?”

Dean decides not to mention Clint Eastwood. It wouldn’t help his case. “I did go through a pretty significant Molly Ringwald phase. I must’ve made Sam and Jo watch _Pretty in Pink_ about a hundred times. I bet she still does a damn good Ducky.”

Cas scrunches his nose in a way that suggests he doesn’t even want to know. Dean kisses the look off his face, using the distraction to wrestle the case out of his hand, crowing in triumph. Cas glares, unamused.

Indiana Jones.

Dean gives the cover a few pensive taps. “Weren't you just teasing me about my _focus_?”

“It’s not my fault you were too defensive to realize that I might be talking about myself. My intention was to surprise you with a marathon today, since you enjoy them so much, and I’ve only seen the first one,” Cas says.

In honor of the occasion, he’s pulled the coffee table alongside the couch and laid out three kinds of cereal, popcorn, pork rinds— a whole mess of snacks Dean didn’t know they had. He lets out a low whistle of appreciation.

“Nice spread.”

A full day of watching Harrison Ford be a total badass while snuggled up to Cas? Sign his ass up. And there's snacks? Dean thinks he's found his heaven.

Cas smiles. “I figured you would appreciate it. And since I don’t really cook…”

“Yeah, we’re definitely gonna have to fix that.”

“Later. For the next nine hours you're mine.”

“Should I… go slip into something more comfortable?”

Cas cocks an eyebrow at the robe Dean’s left hanging open over his clothes. “Do you own anything more comfortable?”

“My birthday suit.” He sprawls across the freshly-made pullout and winks.

"My intentions are pure, I assure you," Cas says, though he's grinning.

Dean can deal with that. He sits up against the mess of pillows and holds his arms open. “C’mere.”

Cas plucks a mug from an end table and slides in next to him.

“Where's mine?” Dean doesn't see another.

Cas jerks his head toward the end table on Dean's other side. He must've been too preoccupied with the food to notice. He grabs the mug and inhales gratefully, but the scent is off. There's something on his cup but it's not coffee. He puts it down as far away as possible.

Cas is smirking when Dean looks over at him.

"Is this because I made fun of your creamer? I take it back."

"Dean, I work with children. The first lesson is no take-backsies.”

That's fair. He didn’t really mean it anyway.

“You could get up and get your own."

Dean snuggles closer.

"That's what I thought." Cas fetches his own cup from the side table and offers it. "Try it."

“Same shit, different cup.” Dean grumbles, but Cas looks so _reasonable_ it's damn useless.

Let the record show that the sip Dean takes is grudging. So are the next twenty or so that it takes to drain the cup.

“Should I give you a straw next time?”

“Shut it, you're missing the movie,” Dean says, passing over his full mug.

Cas mutters something that sounds a whole hell of a lot like _same shit different cup_.

By the end of _Temple of Doom_ Dean is in a trance, brought on by the comfort of Cas at his side and the sheer badassery flashing across the screen. He can't remember the last time he moved his legs, and he's barely aware of the rest of his body except for the extra warmth where Cas touches him. He wishes they had at least another week off so they could spend it just like this.

Of course that's when he remembers. He jerks upright, cursing.

“Dean, what is it?” Cas asks, clamping a hand onto his shoulder.

“Charlie.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“I was supposed to go hang out with her sometime this week. I completely forgot.” He falls back against the pillows, groaning.

Cas gathers him against his chest and murmurs, “I hope you'll forgive me for wanting you to forget again.”

“How bad is it that I was just thinking the same thing? Except Charlie.”

“Well, she is less likely to hold a grudge than, say, Jo, “ Cas muses. “You could call her. We got an early enough start that this won't take all day.”

“This probably makes me an awful friend, but I don't really want to. Charlie's awesome, but how many chances am I going to get to laze around in my underwear with the gorgeous guy I had sex with last night?”

Cas's cheeks pinken almost imperceptibly, and he deadpans, “That depends on how many gorgeous guys you have sex with.”

“Funny, but not useful.”

“It’s already Friday. She’ll be back in two days, and I think she’ll forgive you the oversight. Did you make definite plans?”

Dean shakes his head.

“In that case— “ Cas nudges Dean into his lap and pulls his head down for a kiss. Slow and languid, their lips move together while the credits finish rolling and the DVD cycles back to the menu, until Dean’s begin to wander across Cas’s jaw and down to his collarbone.

Cas gasps and threads his hands through Dean’s hair before regaining control of himself. He takes Dean’s face between his hands and presses their foreheads together. “Hey. Pure intentions, remember?”

“I never said anything about my intentions,” Dean says, punctuating it with a roll of his hips. The thin fabric of his boxers leaves nothing up for interpretation.

Cas seizes his hips, holding them a safe distance away. “We still have two movies to watch. Please, Dean, have mercy on me.”

“You did this to yourself,” Dean reminds him, but slides off to put in the next movie.

***

Dean nuzzles closer, burying his face into the soft skin of Cas’s neck as he wedges a hand under his shoulder to hold him tighter. Cas stirs and presses a scratchy kiss to his temple.

They'd fallen asleep during the encore presentation of their epic Indy marathon in exactly this position. Dean had stopped watching partway through, preferring to rest his head on Cas's shoulder and listen to his steady breathing.

He does the same now in the growing daylight. Cas is solid and warm, and he keeps running his hand almost sleepily over Dean's boxer-clad thigh and hip. Fingers catch in the wrinkles of his shirt as Cas strokes up his side, fingers just grazing a nipple before heading back to where they started.

Dean tries to ignore it and focus on how nice it feels to be held close like this. Really, he does, because he doesn't think Cas realizes what he's doing— until his chest shakes with a silent chuckle when he finds it hard from the attention.

Dean covers Cas's hand with his own, settling it on his hip. "Tease."

"I haven't started anything I don't intend to follow through with." Cas punctuates the statement by grabbing his ass, grinding Dean's hardening cock against his hip.

He’d been trying to ignore that too, but the sensation pulls a groan from his chest and all hopes of forgetting about it go out the window.

Cas turns onto his side, sliding his thigh between Dean’s to rock against him. He kisses with purpose, long and deep, all coaxing tongue and shared breath, and Dean is sure he means to disassemble him.

Cas pulls Dean’s leg high over his hip, a rough palm scraping against the sensitive skin behind his knee. Dean feels achingly exposed despite his boxers, and his hand tightens on its own against Cas’s chest.

It’s all sliding pressure, never quite the same, and it’s overwhelming. They’re not so much kissing as panting near each other’s mouths.

“Cas, please. I am way too old to come in my pants.”

Cas kisses him soundly and releases his leg before inching down, taking the topsheet with him. Dean shivers as Cas mouths at the head of his cock over his boxers before dragging them off. A hand holding his hip to keep him on his side, Cas works torturously slow, just closed lips gliding up and down the shaft, and then soft kisses sucked around the head, and finally tongue. When he actually takes him in his mouth, Dean has to prop up a shaking leg on the bed to brace himself. The noise he makes is embarrassing, but Cas seems to like it, judging by the way he closes his eyes and sucks in a breath through his nose.

His hand runs up and around Dean’s thigh, then to his ass and just traces the cleft, the barest suggestion of what he could do. Long fingers skim over his balls before joining the rhythm of his mouth.

Cas moves in long, lazy strokes but his lips are strong and tight around his shaft, and Dean’s hips buck harder each time they catch on the head. Cas’s tongue sweeps over it in quick strokes, making his stomach flutter in response.

Dean’s had his hand fisted in Cas’s hair for he doesn’t know how long, and Cas is making these breathy little moans like he’s the one being blown out of his mind. Dean has to fight the urge to push, to fuck greedily into Cas’s mouth, because he is so close. The thought alone is enough to push him over the edge, and he jerks with the force of it.

Cas’s lips are wet with spit and semen when he crawls back up to pin Dean into the mattress and kiss him.

“So much for pure intentions," Dean says, breathless.

"That was yesterday," Cas reminds him and guides his hand to his cock. Dean strokes him lightly over his pants and laughs at the blooming frustration on Cas’s face as he rolls his hips in search of friction.

He risks a quick glance at the clock. It’s already 11:30, and he has no idea when Jo or Missouri might be coming back.

"Don’t you owe me a shower?"

Cas sits back on his heels and nods, then climbs off of Dean and all but drags him up the stairs and into the bathroom. Once inside he cranks on the water, then turns back to pin Dean against the door, sealing their mouths together in a greedy kiss.

Dean slips his hands under the waistband of Cas’s pants to knead his ass as Cas sucks on his tongue. It’s all too intense, and he has to pull away so he can yank Cas’s clothes off and push him gently toward the shower.

He presses close behind Cas under the spray, hands touching every bit of wet skin he can reach. His lips and teeth scatter attention over the sides of his neck and the tops of his shoulders while Cas pillows his head on one forearm braced against the tile.

Dean’s never just touched him like this, felt the silky hardness that is somehow nothing like his own. He wants to take his time— to memorize the warm weight against his palm, to find all the ways to make his lover moan and shudder— but Cas has gone too long without relief, and it shows. His hips jerk indecently in time with Dean’s hand, and his stomach jumps against the arm wrapped around his waist.

Between batches of kisses and bites Dean rests his forehead on Cas’s shoulder, watching the warm water sluice over the muscles of his back, blurring the lines of that damn tattoo, down to the swell of his ass where it rolls against Dean’s hips. Nothing and no one has ever been so gorgeous to him.

Cas’s whole body begins to tense and shake, every exhale a barely audible groan. Then he’s coming, slicking Dean’s hand as he strokes him through the aftershocks. Spent, Cas sags back against him, and Dean strokes a hand through his hair as he recovers.

They stand wrapped around each other under the spray until it turns cold. When they step out into the steamy bathroom Cas wraps a towel around him, and his chest aches at the tenderness of the gesture.

***

Their hair is still damp when gravel crunches outside. Cas is flipping pancakes with Dean flush behind him supervising, arms around his thankfully clothed waist. The _New York Times_  Wednesday crossword lies abandoned on the small table.

The side door slams, then Jo’s unmistakable voice calls out, “It stinks in here. Cas, did you try to— _oh_.”

She stills at the kitchen doorway, bags hanging off her shoulders, and takes in the sight of Dean’s hand still resting on Cas’s hip, smirking.

“I see the fling’s been flung. Well, it’s not camp without a summer romance.”

God, did she have to put it in such chick flick terms? Dean glares at her until she backs out and thuds up the stairs.

He turns to Cas with a _C_ _an you believe her?_ look, but he’s already turned back to the pan.

He’s quiet through breakfast, too, concentrating on his crossword, only speaking to mumble potential solutions to himself. His left hand rests high on Dean’s thigh while his right alternates between his fork and pen. When he’s finished with both, he graces Dean’s lips with a chaste kiss before heading outside.

Dean washes the breakfast dishes alone, humming to himself. The morning’s good mood hasn’t quite worn off despite Jo’s dig. It’s a shame to have to strip and put away the couch bed after only one night, but his and Cas’s scents are mixed on the pillows. It’ll be a comfort tonight, alone in his tiny bed.


	13. Chapter 13

“You know you’re only gonna be here another three weeks, right?” Dean says as he drops Sam’s enormous duffle at the top of the stairs. “Why do you need all this extra crap?”

Sam attempts a shrug under the weight of two enormous messenger bags. “I’m gonna have a lot of work stuff to catch up on when I get back. Might as well get a head start.”

“You’re a workaholic. Seriously, dude, get help. I know a great place.”

Sam just shakes his head and sets his bags on the bed, then stands there looking oversized and awkward.

“So you and Cas seem... comfortable. I guess that means one of you finally got over himself and made a move?”

Dean looks everywhere but at his brother. He really doesn’t want to be having this conversation. The kid’s got excellent reasoning skills, why does he need to verify it?

“Jo’s gonna kill you.”

“Why? If she wanted dibs, she could’ve called it years ago.”

“‘No booze, no butts, no bootycalls,’” Sam intones, airquotes and everything.

“It’s not a bootycall,” Dean grinds out around clenched teeth, finally looking at him.

“Hey, sorry. It was a joke. I didn’t mean it like that. I just… “ He shrugs, hands in his pockets, looking small for once.

Dean sinks down onto the bed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “No, I know how you meant it. She already knows, anyway. And I don’t think she’ll make it past the amused stage anytime soon.”

The mattress dips with Sam’s weight.

“Look, I’m happy for you. Really. But you don’t have the best history with relationships, either of you. I mean, you're like the king of one— " He seems to rethink that statement and resets. "You’re my brother, and he’s my friend. I’m not choosing sides if this goes south.”

Really? His own brother couldn’t just let him have this.

“You mean like it did with Crowley?”

Sam looks uncomfortable, running a hand through his hair and clearing his throat weakly. “So you know about that.”

Dean shrugs and turns to look at him, resolving to at least feign indifference.

Sam’s raised eyebrows squash his forehead to almost normal proportions. “And you’re… good with it?”

“No, I’m not good with it. But the guy’s a dick. Not worth my time.”

“Not worth taking sides over either.”

As far as Dean's concerned, there's only one side there to begin with.

***

Dean is absent-mindedly arranging various stacks of cardstock on the wobbly folding table when a small but strong fist punches him hard in the shoulder. A spray of papers scatters across the table.

“Where in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks were you? I thought you were gonna come hang out.”

“I was, uh, busy, Charlie, I’m sorry. I didn't think we had definite plans.” No longer under the influence of Cas, he can see it for the lame excuse that it is.

Charlie’s face falls and he feels like a douche. No, he _is_ a douche. He just hadn’t realized it until now. He’s never been the guy to get all swept away, either, until now.

She crosses her arms and narrows her eyes, like maybe she can blink him out of existence if she glares hard enough. “Busy. The whole purpose of a break is to not be busy, what— “ She leans in, and her voice lowers in pitch but not volume. “ _Gettin_ ’ busy?”

He gives her a scathing look but can’t maintain it. Ducking his head, he occupies himself with gathering and re-alphabetizing the cabin assignments.

She gasps and flings out her arms, one landing another blow to his shoulder. This time he holds onto the cards.

“I told you to tell me!”

“I was never gonna do that. And you’ve told me nothing about your lady friend, so why would I share very personal details about what may or may not have happened here if I don’t even know her name?”

“Dorothy. So, what are you guys like a thing now?”

“Dorothy. What, did you hook up when you were volunteering at her nursing home? And why aren’t you texting like crazy?”

He expects a third punch, but it doesn't come. Instead she laughs even as she scolds him.

“Hey! It’s a family name. And she’s gotten really busy with her internship and stuff. She’s gonna text me later.”

“You guys ok?”

She nods, tucking her cheeks into a grin. “Yeah, we’re good. They’re just running her like crazy at the paper.”

“Alright, you can stop making that face anytime.”

“Oh, you get it. You’re in _looove_.” She practically coos the last word.

“Am not.” Probably.

He doesn't want to think about it. That always tends to ruin things for him.

***

Jo is stirring pasta in a huge pot on the six-burner.

“We could just buy premade… Would save a whole lot of trouble. And scalding risks.”

“Yeah, but then it wouldn’t be the traditional homemade mac ‘n’ cheese Mr. Director is so fond of.”

“If he wants it so bad, he can come make it and I’ll give the damn speech,” Dean says from inside the fridge, tucking blocks of cheese under his arms and grabbing milk and butter for the roux.

“You wanna give him CPR, too? He might need it if he dares desecrate my kitchen again. Hot pot moving.”

He chuckles, as much at her threat as at just how much she sounds like her mother when she cooks, even more so after the week at the Roadhouse. Dean waits for the telltale whoosh of draining pasta before turning around.

“Hey, how is Ellen, anyway?”

She looks around as if Dean were talking to someone she hadn't heard come in. “Uh, were we talking about my mom?”

“You reminded me of her just then. Well always, actually. It’s kinda freaky, you should see about that.”

“Spittin’ image, everybody says. She’s good. Misses her boys,” she says, slipping into the deeper ruts of her mother’s accent. “She says you should swing by on your way to Texas.”

“‘You’ as in me?”

Her look seems to say that if he were any dumber she’d cook him.

“I don’t remember anything about going to Texas.”

“Well then I spoke too soon. I thought you and Sam would’ve discussed things by now.”

“Oh, we’ve discussed things. Just not that.”

"Things as in his brother and friend hooking up?"

She looks at him over the top of the now-drained pasta pot, the cook's equivalent of peering over eyeglass frames.

"Jeez, Jo, do you have to call it that?"

"I don't know what else to call it. I mean, what are you telling people?"

"Nothing. We don't want to make it weird. And people who? There's you and there's Sam. Fine, Charlie too, but I didn't actually tell her. She guessed."

"You don’t think it’s gonna be weird with you two pretending not to be a thing while you’re making googly eyes everywhere? Charlie's not the only one who can put two and two together."

His hand stills over the pot of sauce.

"We don’t— we’ll keep the googly eyeing private ok?"

She cocks a disbelieving eyebrow at him. "Whisk, Winchester."

***

Later, freshly showered and smelling like an ad for an antarctic cruise line, Dean shuffles down the hall and knocks softly on Cas’s door.

It opens a crack, and Cas peers around it before whispering, “Dean, you don’t have to knock, you can just come in.”

He reaches up for a kiss that Dean is happy to return, smiling into Cas’s lips, hands tight on his waist. He feels starved for attention after spending most of the day unable to reach out to each other as often as they’ve become accustomed to.

“I didn’t know if you were in the middle of something… “ he says when they break apart.

“Like what?” Cas leads him to the bed and settles against the headboard, patting the space between his knees. “You’ve already seen me naked.”

Dean leans back against his chest. “I don’t know, private stuff?”

“Well, if that means masturbating, you could always just join me. And if I’m involved in any satanic rituals I’ll put a sock on the door, though I think the chanting would tip you off.”

Dean shakes his head at him but files both ideas away for future enjoyment.

His head falls back to rest on Cas’s shoulder, just reveling in his presence. Cas takes a deep, contented breath, and the exhale tickles the side of his face.

“Did you use my shampoo?”

Dean shifts, wraps their clasped hands around his middle. “I ran out. Figured you wouldn’t mind.”

It’s a complete lie, and judging by the huff that escapes his nostrils, Cas knows it. The truth— that he wants to go to sleep smelling like Cas— is too embarrassing to admit, even to the man himself.

“Not at all.”

A comfortable silence falls over them, and it could still be Friday if it weren't for the way his thoughts keep pulling him back to that night's dinner. He'd braced himself for Sam's opening night speech, readied for the squall it would set off in his gut even though he knows better now, but it never came. And now he feels almost let down, like he missed a chance to prove something to himself.

“That was weird, right?” Dean asks, half turning in Cas’s arms to glance up at him.

“No. I like it.” He runs a hand through Dean’s hair for emphasis.

“What? No, dinner. Sam didn’t go through the whole sob story run-down. He usually does, right?”

Cas's hand stills over the short hairs at the back of his neck. “Yes, that was unusual.”

“Do you think Jo could’ve said something to him? She denied it, but she saw how pissy I was that first night.”

“Maybe she wasn’t the only one.”

Dean hardly knew anyone at that point and hadn’t considered any of them would be paying attention to him.

“You didn’t… ?“ He lets the question trail off, doesn’t know how to finish it without it sounding like an accusation.

“I was referring to Sam, but no. I don’t talk to your brother about things that are between you and him.”

Dean nods.

“I know I was— ” He searches for the right word.

“Pissy?” Cas supplies, his smirk audible.

That about covers it. But he’s in a better place now, not always on the defensive, not always running down the roster of his failures. At least, he thinks he is. Sam didn’t give him the chance to really test that theory.

Dean elbows him, but continues. “... pissy about it last time, but I think I would’ve been okay. Not great, not perfect, but I could’ve handled it. Just another part of the schtick. Got nothing to do with me.”

“I disagree, and while I don’t claim to know his thoughts, I’d bet Sam would too. He’s just as perceptive as you are— perhaps he figured it out on his own and wanted to make you more comfortable. Maybe he got tired of it. You should talk to him about it if it's bothering you this much.”

Dean snorts.

“Stop that. You’re perfectly capable of talking about things. I’ve witnessed it firsthand.”

“That was… informing. Not talking. There’s _feelings_ in talking. Besides, Sam and I don’t have that kind of relationship.” They didn't have a relationship at all until a few months ago.

He figures Cas must've been thinking the same, because he says "It's not too late to change that."

Dean makes a noncommittal noise and tucks his head more securely into the crook of Cas's neck. 


	14. Chapter 14

After two mornings of waking to a near-empty house, Cas's half-drunk coffee and the sound of running water from Jo’s morning shower the only signs of life, Dean drags himself downstairs in time to intercept Cas coming out of the kitchen. He’s ready to walk out the door, coveralls unzipped over a staff t-shirt, when Dean slides in front of him.

“Coffee's on the counter ” Cas says.

"That's not coffee."

Dean leans down to give him a thankful kiss anyway, pressing close, running his fingers along the border of cotton and canvas. This has to last them all or most of the day. They don’t have the luxury anymore of lazy mornings that bleed into the afternoon.

He follows the zippered edge down, fingers grazing along the fabric over Cas’s crotch. “I hear these work a lot better if you zip them up.”

Cas sags into him and groans, head falling heavily onto his shoulder.

“Unfair. Cruel,” he pants as Dean digs his fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “There are kids around.” His weak protests are muffled against Dean’s collarbone.

Dean cradles his jaw, lifting his head up to give him a lingering kiss. “Not yet. Not if you walk fast. You can get even with me later,” he says, pushing him out the door before padding into the kitchen.

Half a cup of caffeinated cream and sugar awaits him as promised. He reheats it as he laces up his boots, wincing at the first burning swig. He plops in two ice cubes and listens to them snap as he heads across the dewy grass to the kitchen.

***

Dean doesn't rush through lunch cleanup, exactly. That would be irresponsible. He does, however, work with unusual efficiency and a distinct lack of his usual screwing around. He can feel Jo’s eyes on his back as he slips a paperback into the pocket of his jeans and heads straight for the woods.

The walk seems longer than he remembers, having not taken it since before the last awesome week of solitude. The path is clear as ever though, once he locates the narrow gap between two bushes he still can't identify, and the leaves wave in greeting.

Stupidly enough, he expected it to look different. Of course it doesn't. The grass still doesn't quite reach his knees, and the wood of the shed and bee boxes' walls show no more weathering than the last time he was here.

Sinking into the chair that used to be Cas’s, he cracks open his book, letting it pull him into another world until the sound of rustling leaves drags him back to the present.

Cas looks relieved to see him there. Maybe he figured he wouldn't come back since he didn't all last week. That was different, considering that they’d been spending nearly every waking moment together. He only stayed away to give Cas some breathing room.

"Hey, Cas," he says, stretching out an arm toward him.

Cas doesn't take the proffered hand, but brushes one of his own across Dean's shoulders as he passes behind him. His chair protests under the weight as he all but falls into it, slumping down and dropping his head back, eyes closed against the sun.

Dean watches him in silence, wondering whether or not he should say something.

"Preteens are... challenging," Cas finally says, as if he could feel Dean's puzzlement. “They form cliques so quickly. No one wants to do anything outside their little group.”

“It’s been two days.”

Cas groans lightly. “Precisely why I’m reconsidering a few key life choices at the moment.”

Dean's stomach roils, imagining this place without Cas, then settles. Teaching.

"It'll be different with a class."

"I don't even want to think about it."

"Nervous?"

"No. It just seems so distant even though it's only two months away. Like my next life I'm not born into yet."

An odd way of putting it, but Dean knows what he means. Two months ago seems like a past life to him.

It would have been a good time to ask how he plans to spend those two months, but silence moves in before he realizes it. Fine by him. He doesn't want to think beyond two weeks, doesn't want to consider having Cas even outside of walking distance, let alone states away. Or worse— out of his life altogether.

Cas sits like that— thrown dramatically over the chair— for a long time, long enough that Dean starts worrying he’ll cause lasting damage to his neck. It’s a nice view, though, and he doesn’t mind the opportunity to admire the graceful curve of Cas’s throat, dark with stubble and seizing every so often with the effort of swallowing.

All that skin, bared like an invitation.

“You know, I’ve never seen the inside of that shed,” he says, with a meaningful glance toward it even though Cas can’t see him.

Cas’s head rolls to a halfway normal angle, and he fixes Dean with an utterly perplexed look.

Dean stares back, eyebrows raised, and bites his lip.

Cas’s squint doesn’t let up, and his voice scrapes when he finally speaks. “It’s just tools and things. I didn’t think— “

Dean leans over and makes his suggestion clear, careful to add a generous amount of tongue to really elaborate on his meaning. “Come on,” he says, getting to his feet and pulling Cas up by the hand.

He gives the bees a wide berth and maneuvers Cas in front of him to open the door of the shed, running a hand across his lower back under the sweaty cotton.

The door wheezes open, and Cas drags out a bucket to prop it open. It’s small inside— more a standalone closet than a shed— and smells of sawdust.

Dean’s eyes adjust to the dim, and he takes in the tall stack of shelves cluttered with tools and the workbench along the far right wall. It seems to have been built to the exact dimensions of the space, its edges ending a prim inch or so from the wall on either side.

“I told you it wasn’t much,” Cas says apologetically from where he leans against the edge of the doorjamb.

Dean shakes his head, letting his voice drop to a more intimate register as he takes a step closer. “We can work with this.”

He dips his head and catches Cas’s lips, pulling gently on his belt loops as he shuffles back the few feet to the workbench. It’s the perfect level to lean against, and the change in height puts him eye to eye with Cas. His face is shadowed against the daylight coming in the door, but his intent is plain in the angle of his head as he brings his hands to Dean's hips, thumbs sliding along the skin just under his t-shirt. Cas licks his lips and leans in, fitting easily into the spread of Dean's legs while Dean’s hands loop behind his neck to pull him closer.

Cas kisses like he's trying to draw Dean into himself, tongue inviting rather than invading. The practiced slide is just the other side of teasing, and when their breaths grow quick and labored he pulls back to press his lips chastely to Dean's.

Dean wishes they could spend all day like this. This, he thinks, threading his fingers through Cas's already wild hair. He wants to _own_ this, to inhabit it, to wear it proudly across his shoulders. Not just the kissing or the sex, but the shared books and the half-drunk coffee cups. He wants to teach Cas to cook and choke down poorly seasoned dinners and listen to him analyze where he went wrong. He wants to see Cas perfectly at home behind the wheel of his baby, to forget whose shirts are whose.

They had the briefest taste of that until reality came rolling back in.

He voices the thought while Cas presses delicate kisses against his jaw.

"I love Sammy and Jo..." He cringes as he realizes how off that sounds, and Cas stills where he was nuzzling behind the corner of his jaw.

"Where is this going?"

Dean chuckles and runs his hands down Cas's sides.

"Nowhere creepy, promise. I love having them around, but I really miss having the place to ourselves. It’s just weird, everyone being back. I didn’t think it would be… the place feels so much smaller now."

Cas _just_ misses the point. "Well, in a way it is, with about sixty more bodies taking up space."

Dean shakes his head. He's not making himself clear, or maybe the idea is fuzzy to begin with. "It's more than that, though. Confining, like there's zoning codes or something. Hell, we have to sneak covert makeout sessions."

Comprehension washes over Cas's face, but the crease between his eyes refuses to unfold. He wraps his arms around Dean's waist and speaks close to his ear, his voice even and deliberate. "Discretion is not sneaking. Sam knows, so do Jo and most of the counselors. We're not hiding anything."

It's a completely reasonable explanation, and Dean wishes he were more comforted by it. He tightens his arms around Cas's shoulders, and every part of him begs to never have to let go.

He does, though, realizing with a start that he has no idea how long they've been in here. Quite a while, judging by the raw, soon-to-be-chapped feeling in his lips.

According to his watch it's been well over an hour. "Mother of crap, Jo is gonna kill me if I'm late."

"I won't let her," Cas murmurs, arms boxing him in against the bench.

Dean reluctantly pushes him away and stands to his full height.

"I'm gonna go change. You coming?"

Cas's eyes roam over his body. "That would probably be unwise. I'll catch up."

A flush blooms across Dean's skin. "I didn't mean it like that," Dean protests, blinking in the daylight as he's shoved gently out of the shed.

***

"Hey, man, can we talk?" Sam intercepts him on the way back to the house— was actually lying in wait by the looks of it.

"Are you following me?"

Sam scoffs and crosses his arms. "Like I need to. You're not subtle. Look, will you just come to my office with me for a minute?"

So much for discretion. Shit. That was where Sam took people to have big, serious conversations.

Dean crosses his arms right back. "I'm not about to get the 'Do you really want to be here?' lecture, am I?"

"No, jeez, will you just come on?" he whines, and rolls his eyes. His whole body seems to follow the gesture, turning Dean’s gigantor, licensed-to-practice-law brother into the scrawny fourteen-year-old who could wheedle him into anything.

Dean isn't a teenager anymore either, but the trick still works.

"Fine. Lead the way, boss."

In his office, Sam drags his chair around the side of the desk.

At Dean's questioning look he explains, "This is kinda personal. I don't want to talk about it across a desk."

A pause. Sam sweeps a hand through his hair before dropping it to his thigh. "I want you to come to Kermit."

Dean’s chair drops out from under him, leaves his ass on the floor with his brother looking obliviously down at him.

"Hell of a time for a road trip, Sammy. Wish I could, but I gotta be back to fix dinner."

Sam blinks slowly, shaking his head. "You know what I mean. Amelia and I already talked about it. A mechanic can get a job basically anywhere, and you can crash with us while you look for a place."

He finally picks up on the dark look Dean's had fixed on him since he started taking and rushes to hedge the offer. "Or you don't have to move there. Just come stay for a while, hang out. I miss having you around, and Amelia really wants to get to know you."

He means well, Dean reminds himself. He just wants to help. It doesn't stall the rising ugly feeling that his brother thinks he needs supervision.

"Look, Sam, I appreciate the offer, but you don't need to... to _manage_ me."

Sam’s eyebrows peak in the center of his forehead. He makes an aborted nose of protest, and his mouth makes the shape of words but none come out.

"That came out wrong. I appreciate everything you've done for me, letting me come here, paying for— " He takes a deep breath and lets it out a as slowly as possible. "You're a good brother, and you've done a lot for me. I'll figure it out from here on. I just want to concentrate on here and now for a while."

"Look, I know you’re busy being deliriously happy with Cas and probably don't want to think very far ahead, but have you thought about what's gonna happen after you leave here? At all? You’ve got less than a month, and then he’s going back to Oregon and you're...?" Sam shrugs. "I mean, have you talked about that?"

"Kinda tends to ruin the mood." Avoidance, Winchester coping strategy numero uno. Does he get bonus points for avoiding the fact that he's avoiding it?

"Is that all you care about?" He doesn't see why Sam's the one who gets to sound hurt here, not with what he's just accused Dean of hanging in the air.

"What? No! What kind of guy do you think I am?"

"A good one. That’s why I don't get you not talking about it, not even _thinking_ about anything past _this_." Sam gestures around them, then stares at him for a long moment, beseeching. Dean looks away first, watching his fingers roll the hem of his shirt.

"I haven’t wanted to think about it. But I guess I kinda always figured I’d go back to Lawrence like I planned to before."

Sam's expression doesn't let up.

“I’ve never had to talk about that kind of thing before. Can you blame me for putting it off?”

“What about Lisa?”

Dean scrunches his eyes shut and shakes his head. “I moved onto her couch one month and the next I was in her bed. Figured that made things pretty clear.”

Sam sighs and runs a hand through his hair, then levels Dean with a serious look. “Don’t hurt him just because you’re scared.”

"Try my damndest not to. We got three weeks, Sam. Let me have that."

He gets up and stalks out of the office. He's done talking and couldn't care less if Sam isn't.

***

He rehashes and rehashes the conversation with Sam, earning several new gouges in his nails as he chops veggies for dinner, careless with his knife. Texas is so far away from everything he cares about— except his brother. The thing is, he can almost see it— renting an apartment just a short drive away from Sam's, being the brother he forgot to be for years. There's nothing for him in Lawrence but greasy memories.

With every near miss he's more and more grateful to Ellen. Her lessons in technique are the only thing keeping his fingertips intact while he daydreams. Jo says nothing, but snatches the knife away and slaps a pair of oven mitts to his chest after he curses for the fourth time.

The rest of the night barely registers except for body heat felt through wrinkled cotton as full lips move over his.


	15. Chapter 15

He finds Charlie and Kevin with their toes in the lake, pretending to supervise a horde of shrieking preteens.

"Well if it isn't the Luke to my Leia."

Charlie pushes her sunglasses back onto her coppery head, craning her neck to stare up at him. "You know they made out right?"

Kevin pipes up with "Shouldn't it be the other way...?"

Charlie holds up a hand. "Details, Chewie. What's up, Princess?"

"I just figured I'd see if I could make up for some of the quality time I missed out on when you all were living the good life in town."

She fakes deliberation before gesturing grandly to the damp planks next to her.

"So, Jar Jar— for or against?"

"I'm gonna pretend the prequels never happened. I don't care how pretty Natalie Portman is, nothing can make up for the guy that played Anakin. Did he even know he was supposed to be acting?"

“Oh, he wasn’t that bad,” Charlie says, bumping him with her shoulder.

“This dock could do better.”

"I always thought he was kind of funny," Kevin says in a small voice.

Two sets of eyebrows raise in his direction. One or more hands might clutch imaginary pearls.

"I know you're young, Kev, but you're on thin ice," Dean warns.

Charlie agrees, adding, "I'm not sure you can be trusted anymore. You might be a spy for the Empire."

"Come on, guys. He talks funny, and there was that time he couldn't keep his tongue in his mouth…?"

Charlie doubles like she's just been punched, and Dean doesn't blame her.

"I'm gonna need you to go watch episodes 4-6 and call us in the morning, " he says while stroking Charlie's hair.

Kevin makes a show of rolling his eyes. "You guys are dicks."

"Delicate ears!" Charlie admonishes, bolting upright. A nosy camper calls back that it's nothing they haven't heard before.

It’s a near-perfect imitation of Cas’s deadpan, and it brings Dean’s reason for coming here rushing back to him.

"Charlie, you mind taking a walk with me?"

She looks to Kevin, and he flaps his hand in a shooing motion.

"What's on your mind, kid?" She asks when they strike land.

He shrugs, suddenly guilty that he came with a motive.

"Come on, you have that squirrelly look on you. I know what that means."

Dean leads the way to a picnic table and parks himself on the top of it while Charlie straddles the bench, chin on her fist. She waits for him to speak, and it's worse than if she prodded. He'd rather she sat next to him so it would be easier to avoid her expectant stare.

He caves, and fast.

"You and Dorothy and the long-distance thing... How does that work?"

“Something tells me this isn't coming from an inappropriate interest in our sex life."

"Well, lesbians are hot," he says with a shrug.

She makes a noise of protest. "No... fetishizing!"

"Sorry, sorry." Bad deflection. "But yeah, it's not."

“Good,” Charlie says, patting his boot. “It’s not that bad for us ‘cause we go to school together, but basically Skype is your best friend. That way you can be together without actually being together.” Her voice is even, but he picks up the innuendo in the phrasing just fine.

“Whoa, hey, no way am I getting full frontal in front of a computer like some pervert.”

She rolls her eyes, exasperated. “A, you are a pervert, and B, don’t knock it til you try it. You’re gonna get desperate, and why jerk it alone when you could have company?”

She does have a point. An involuntary shiver trickles down his back at the thought of watching Cas, Cas watching him. _Get off that train right now_ , he tells himself, flinching internally at his word choice.

Another, smaller flinch comes a second later, because watching, not participating only means that Cas won’t be with him. He’ll be a thousand miles away living a completely separate life.

“Aren’t you worried, though? What if she meets somebody else? What if you do?”

Charlie winces. “I lied. Communication is your best friend, which you completely suck at. You’re gonna have to talk about things that bother you, not just bury them and forget about it.“

“I don’t do that,” Dean scoffs.

“That your final answer?”

Charlie has had him figured out since the moment they met. Of course she'd see right through that. He is trying, he's just never been good at it.

She nudges his knee with her shoulder. “Stop thinking so hard, it’ll be fine. And hey, you know what’s great about teaching? Summers off.”

***

The next day, during what should be the second-best part of his day, he's all nerves and non-sequiturs. Cas runs a half-hearted monologue about the unfolding drama between Devon and Sean and Adrian, names Dean just can't put faces to. He must clear his throat to speak a half dozen times. After nearly an hour of sending him concerned, searching glances, Cas finally asks what's wrong.

"Nothing." The reply is either too quick or not quick enough, because he leans over and turns Dean's face so he has no choice but to meet his eyes.

"You can tell me," he says with that earnest expression that just wraps itself around Dean's heart and squeezes.

It should be so simple to say _Hey, what are we to each other?_ or _I don't want the back of your shitmobile to be the last I see of you_. For a second he’s almost brave enough, with Cas’s true-blue eyes boring into his— blue for honesty, for faith, sincerity. Blue like promises kept. As soon as it starts, his voice grinds to halt in his throat, a pileup of words he’s put together over and over in his head.

Because you have to make promises before you can keep them, and they haven’t.

Cas was offered promises before and didn’t take them. He flat-out said so.

Why should this time be any different?

***

Sunday night at dinner Cas leans over and whispers in Dean’s ear, “Save room for pie.”

Dean pauses mid-chew to shoot him a confused look.

“We’re going out. I already cleared it with Jo.”

He swallows with difficulty. “Jo?”

Dean wants to protest the way Cas just assumed he'd say yes, but in all honesty he doesn't think he'd deny him anything at this point. He does grumble at having to get permission from Jo, but she winks when he turns to look at her.

“No dish duty for you tonight. You owe me.”

“We’re taking my car,” Cas says 20 minutes later when Dean starts to head toward the Impala.

"You can drive my baby," he offers, his chest full and aching with hope that Cas will agree.

He shakes his head, unyielding.

It’s no use arguing. Still, Dean gives the car a wide berth as he circles around to the passenger side.

“It’s not going to explode, Dean. I drove it across three and a half states, and it didn’t even hiccup.”

Dean doesn’t care. This POS doesn’t deserve Cas.

Cas is still giving him that determined look, so he sucks it up and gets in.

“So you asked Jo’s permission to take me out. Don’t I get a corsage or something?”

Cas groans. “Please don’t put it like that. I simply asked if she would mind cleaning up alone tonight. Sam will probably offer to help, anyway.”

“She wouldn’t let him. Apparently she hasn’t forgotten about whatever happened when he, uh, _helped_ with breakfast.”

Cas drives silently for a while, brow sliding lower over his eyes as something seems to occur to him.

“Ellen taught you to cook, right? You and Jo?”

Dean makes a noise in the affirmative.

“Why not Sam?”

Dean was expecting it but still laughs.

“He was more concerned with the eating side of things.” Not that Dean could blame him. The kid grew like bamboo— he needed all the calories he could get.

“And you weren’t?”

“Sam may be book smart, but I’m street smart. See, when you do the cooking you get to sample the food before it’s ready. Therefore, more of the eating side. Y'know, from the cooking side.”

The car stops outside the same diner where Dean and Jody had lunch.

“You know about this place?” Dean asks.

“I’ve spent four summers in this town. I know every place. Be right back.”

Right. He forgot.

Cas backs out of the door less than a minute later with a whole pie, barking good-naturedly at someone out of sight. It’s warm, with browned, bubbly cheddar covering half the top. Dean holds it with both hands as Cas swings the car around and heads back the way they came.

“You don’t like it with cheese?”

Cas shakes his head.

“But you ate it when I brought you a piece. I watched you.”

A shrug. “Of course I ate it. You brought it for me.”

Affection fizzes over in his chest, and he leans over to plant a kiss behind Cas’s ear.

They pass the road that leads to Camp Campbell and several miles of farmland before Cas turns the car onto a tiny dirt track between two fallow fields.

They spread a blanket over the trunk of the Continental and sit there to eat with plastic forks right out of the tin. The pie is as good as he remembers, the perfect combination of savory and sweet.

Something occurs to Dean, something that has been wedged into a corner of his mind since the bonfire, shaken loose by talk of his and Sam's childhood.

"Can I ask you something?" He leads in carefully, tone wavering. He's unsure if he should sound casual or serious.

Cas turns to regard him for a moment with a furrowed brow. He seems to come to a decision, as his scowl lightens and he nods, once.

Dean settles on curious and asks, "Why don't you talk about your family?"

Cas stakes his fork in the remainder of his half of the pie and pushes the plate toward Dean.

"It's no tragedy, I just don't have contact with them anymore. No sense in rehashing the same old stories."

He's not getting off that easy. Dean can still picture the way his face shuttered closed, the way he jabbed his poker into the ground— it was obviously more painful for him than he wanted to admit.

"I've never heard them." An invitation.

Cas leans back against the Continental's rear window, pulling his legs in and sandwiching his hands between his thighs.

"There were seven of us, so we didn't have much. It was just our mom most of the time, our dad wandered in and out of the picture as he saw fit. She had a good enough job, but with eight, sometimes nine people... There was a lot of pressure on my older siblings to contribute, but by the time I was old enough it was just Anna and me at home. We didn't need to do that. We still worked, but it all went to college funds instead of bills and food, and our brothers and sisters resented us for it."

"So what, they just threw a bitch fit and stopped talking to you?"

"Basically. Convinced our mother we were lazy and ungrateful, too."

"What about Anna?"

"I think she's living abroad now."

Dean lets out a long breath. He couldn't imagine turning on Sammy or Jo like Cas's family had on him, not knowing if they were even on the same continent. Family just doesn't do that.

Cas drifts far away after he finishes speaking, back into old memories he only dredged up because Dean asked him to.

When a smile grows on Cas's face and then collapses like it's been smacked off, Dean finally says, "Hey, come back."

He slips an arm around Cas's shoulders and nuzzles against his temple, his other hand coming to rest on a denim-covered knee. "I'm sorry, you probably didn't want to think about that. I shouldn't have asked."

Cas leans into him, but his eyes remain glassy and unfocused. Dean lets his hand trail from his knee and replaces it on the tense muscles of his jaw. Cas lets him turn his head and slowly reinhabits his eyes as they meet Dean's.

The approach is slow, the brush of lips gentle and grounding, and Cas responds with bruising intensity, biting Dean's lower lip, running his tongue along it. His left hand finds Dean's to intertwine their fingers. His right slides up the inside of Dean's thigh, and Dean groans when it stops before reaching his groin.

He pulls away from Cas's mouth to suck kisses down the column of his neck, stubble scraping as he drags his lips back up to grate out, "Backseat?"

Cas responds by sliding out from under his arm and coming to stand in front of him, already shrugging off his shirt. It lands next to Dean on the thin blanket. Then the whole thing slides— Dean, shirt, blanket— as Cas pulls him closer by his calves, guiding them to lock around his waist, and pins him flat on his back. Dean grips tighter with his legs and rolls his hips as Cas pushes his shirt up, following its path with his lips. He wrestles it over his head and runs his hands through eternally wild hair as Cas’s tongue flicks over his nipple.

It's been too long since they've had this, too many nights of fully clothed heavy petting sessions that end quiet and frustrated.

"Cas, please," he pants, and the dark head nods between his hands but doesn't fucking let up, just trails his lips back down Dean's stomach and over the tightness of his jeans. He finally stands only to grab Dean's foot and start unlacing his boot.

Dean kicks lightly at him with his other foot and growls, "For fuck's sake just rip it off."

Cas laughs a little at the all too appropriate choice of curse and suggests with a nod toward his other foot that Dean could help too.

He feels ridiculous with his leg up in the air, though it's just Cas here, and he seemed to enjoy the view the last time Dean was in this position.

Cas lets his foot down gently onto the rear bumper, and then there's a shuffle of fabric. When Dean looks up Cas is standing on a heap of denim in nothing but tented white boxers. His skin is flushed with arousal, rose-gold in the fading light, the kind that turns every color rich and timeless.

He reaches a hand out and pulls Dean to stand on thankfully smooth gravel. He presses close, skin on skin, and fits their mouths together, his tongue sliding over Dean's. Hands roam over his sides, solid and possessive. They home in on the fly of his jeans, jerking it open and forcing their way down the back of the waistband to knead Dean’s ass, spreading his cheeks teasingly. If he weren’t already begging, that would’ve done it.

Cas pulls his hands away to reach for the blanket and drape it over Dean's shoulders.

"Backseat," he says against Dean’s lips and gingerly walks around the side of the car, leaning in the passenger window to dig in the glove compartment. Dean wastes no time spreading the blanket across the backseat before shucking off his jeans and boxers.

Cas loses his final layer and settles in, cock jutting thick and proud as he rolls a condom down over it, his eyes fixed hotly on Dean. He slouches down and pats his lap, and Dean clambers in to straddle him.

Cas works him open one slick finger at a time as they rock against each other. Dean wonders if he could come just like this, around Cas's fingers, hard lengths dragging against each other, but he’s in no hurry to find out. Today he wants everything Cas is willing to give him.

He feels around for the bottle of lube and slicks them both before hunching in the cramped backseat to sink down onto Cas's cock. Too tall to ride him in earnest, Dean settles for a rocking grind that nonetheless has them panting, even more so when Cas closes a hand over his shaft, one delicate thumb stroking over the head. Dean rocks his hips faster to keep pace with their quickening breaths, and Cas’s free hand digs into his shoulder as he mumbles incoherently into his neck.

Cas’s stomach starts to twitch against Dean’s cock, and the irregular stimulation sends his nerves reeling. His hips stutter and lose their rhythm but Cas keeps fucking into him, hips jerking to drive him deeper into Dean’s body. He just takes it, and instead of feeling used he feels completely taken care of. He takes Cas's face between shaking hands and channels that into a breathless kiss. He’s close and can tell Cas is too. He clenches around him, and then Cas is _gone_ , nails digging into his hip, forehead pressing into Dean’s as he moans through his orgasm. His hand tightens around Dean for the last frantic strokes it takes to bring him shuddering to completion.

Cas’s lips drag against his bare chest as he nudges him up to pull out, and his hands fiddle between them with practicalities that Dean's too blissed out to care one lick about.

Finally Cas's lips return to his, and his hands stroke up and down his back in long soothing lines. So soothing that the feeling that usually hums contentedly in his gut erupts straight out his idiot mouth.

"I can't believe we only have two weeks left," he mumbles against Cas's cheek.

The hands on his back still.

He expected Cas to take it from there. He's so much better at the emotional stuff— expressing it anyway. But he doesn't. He just _hmm_ s and starts stroking Dean's back again.

Maybe Cas is as deep in denial as he is. Or maybe he just doesn't care.

Dean closes his eyes against the sinking feeling in his gut, burying his face in Cas's shoulder.

The sky is fully dark the next time he opens his eyes. When he sits upright Cas is staring far off, and his arms loop loosely around Dean's waist, hands linked so that only the heels really touch his skin.

Dean cups his cheek. "You in there?"

He shakes his head, but his eyes come into focus and eventually shift to Dean's.

"Home?"

It isn’t, not really, but Dean nods anyway.

Cas's hand is restless in his own during the short drive, alternately squeezing and loosening to stroke the palm with his thumb.

Dean stares at him for a long moment after he puts the car in park. The usual half frown of his resting face gives away nothing of what he's thinking. Dean doesn't ask, instead pressing what he hopes is a reassuring kiss to the back of his hand before reaching over to turn the car off.

He opens his door, nudging Cas out of his thoughts when he fails to do the same.

"Home, Cas."

Sam and Jo both take in their dusty and disheveled clothing when they pass through the living room on their way upstairs. There’s a mixture of amusement and knowing from Jo, but Dean can see the analysis behind Sam’s narrowed eyes.

Cas kisses him thoroughly, almost sweetly at his open bedroom door, and Dean expects him to ask to stay. He doesn't.

"Good night," he says, and his voice rumbles through Dean's chest.

Then he backs away, eyes falling, before turning to head to his room. 


	16. Chapter 16

Somewhere near the bottom of the day's third consecutive page, Dean realizes that Cas is late. No, that's not exactly right. He's later than usual, enough that Dean has had time to pick up the thread of the story he usually abandons mid-paragraph in favor of Cas's voice. Just the knowledge that he isn't distracted becomes a distraction, and he glances up after every paragraph as if that will make Cas appear faster.

Cas is unhurried when he finally does arrive, his steps deliberate over the uneven ground that Dean thinks he should have long memorized. His chair is a distant foot away, and he sits without scooting it closer, eyeing the creased paperback in Dean's lap.

"You've been reading that for a long time."

Dean takes offense at that. Sure, he's never been a very fast reader, but Cas's basis for judgment is skewed. Dean would be a lot farther along if he weren’t so distracting.

"I would've been done by now if I'd actually been reading it, not just holding it open while you distract me."

Cas tips his head from side to side, then gets up and walks over to the shed. Dean follows, expecting a pleasurable diversion, but the door stutters closed before he reaches it. He pulls it open far enough to see Cas aimlessly misplacing various tools.

"What are you doing?"

Cas keeps shuffling things around, overacting as he pretends to look for something.

"Not being a distraction."

Dean steps into the tiny room and fits himself against Cas's back, covering restless hands with his own. Cas lets Dean touch him but makes no move to reciprocate.

"I didn't mean it like that, ya big baby. Please come distract me. I'll bitch about it if it makes you feel better." The affectionate insult draws a laugh, and Cas relaxes back into him. "Come sit with me?"

Cas elbows him lightly in the ribs.

"Go read your book. I'll be out soon."

He isn't.

***

Wednesday is scorching and lonely. Jo cracks in the heat of the kitchen, snapping at him for no goddamn reason, and Cas putters in his shed again instead of keeping him company. At this rate he'll finish his book by Friday.

Dean has almost fallen into a sticky, dissatisfied sleep when two brisk knocks rouse him from his doze. He curses and slides off the bed, shuffling to open the door. Cas is there, cradling a short stack of paperbacks in both hands, still dressed in jeans and the bright staff shirt that Dean recognizes as his own. Hurt jabs between his ribs. Since when does Cas knock?

“Cas, what— ” He starts to reach out, but the books are in the way, and Cas pushes them into his hands.

He speaks more to the books than to Dean. “I was tidying, and I found these. I wanted to make sure they got back to you.”

Why does Cas care about this so much that he has to do it right now? He hasn’t even finished them all— his smiling bee bookmark is still sticking out a good half-inch from what looks like the Bradbury’s back cover.

He flattens his hand on top of the stack and holds Cas’s wrist so he can’t push the books at him again. “Hang onto them, you can give them back next week.”

“I finished them,” he insists, and Dean feels as empty as Cas’s voice sounds. He glances at the bookmark, knows Cas sees him do it, but he doesn't move to pluck it out. “Please take them.”

It comes out flat at the end, like a statement. Non-negotiable.

“You’re wearing my shirt, if you wanna give that back, too, while you’re at it,” Dean snaps, too loud. Cas had been wearing it all day, but it only began to bother him in that moment. Cas looks down at himself then back up, confused. The movement highlights the smudges under his eyes, the exaggerated downturn of his lips.

“I— It must’ve gotten mixed in with mine, after… “ he drops a hand from the books to pick at the hem, a pitiful echo of the gesture he used to divest Dean of it barely two weeks ago.

At that moment his anger fizzles and shorts out. Cas is hurting— has been hurting— and he doesn’t know why but suspects it’s his fault. All he wants is for time to back up so he can figure it out, but time is a stubborn bastard and a sadist. He doesn’t know what to say or how, so he takes the books and walks them the few steps to his dresser. Cas is already backing out the door when he turns around. Dean catches him by the hand and pulls him in close.

"Hey, I'm sorry. I'm an asshole. I'm sorry."

Dean kisses him, and Cas kissing back is just _right_ , like a chord settling into tune.

Encouraged, he pulls him even closer and slides his hands up Cas's sides under his shirt, seeking more touch, more of that solid ground feeling. Cas's hands are heavy on his shoulders and he takes a step back, deeper into the room, trusting him to follow.

He doesn't.

_Damn discretion_ , he thinks, and flattens his hands against the small of Cas's back to press closer, hips to hips, chest to solid chest. For once his tongue invades Cas's mouth instead of the other way around.

Cas pulls back as soon as it registers.

“Dean, what are you doing?”

“Apologizing.” He thought it would be obvious.

“Not like this. We’ve barely talked all day.”

Dean doesn't want to talk. He just wants to get as much of him as possible, wants to remember the way he feels— the exact dimensions and movement of his lips, arms around him while Cas moves inside him, wants to remember rough hands in his and broad shoulders filling his arms— because he doesn’t know when or if he’ll ever have it again. Because the baking-soda-vinegar feeling goes flatter every time Cas hesitates.

“That’s what pillowtalk is for.”

“Dean,” he says, toneless. He plucks Dean's hands from his back and just drops them. They swing near Dean's thighs.

Then he walks away, closing the door behind him with a final _click_.

Dean curses every way he knows how and smacks the stack of books off of the dresser as he passes.

He collapses back on his rumpled sheets, now cool to the touch, and snorts. Sleep is off the agenda for tonight. His mind crawls with thoughts that buzz and click and leave slime squelching in his veins. A single realization rises above the tumult and spills sour acid into his gut: Cas walked away from him.

Everything has changed. How can his life be repeating itself?


	17. Chapter 17

Dean finishes distributing platters of desserts among the benches and settles for a seat next to Kevin in the deepest circle of hell, which happens to be located in the outermost ring of benches, his back to the cold sneaking in under the barn doors.

He and Jo spent the afternoon in aprons and oven mitts, hurriedly throwing together bastardized desserts— s'mores brownies, s'mores cookies, baked s'mores that gelatinized as they cooled. They arrive just in time to hear Sam's warning that the story they were about to hear was legitimately frightening, and that if anyone wanted to move to the back or cover their ears no one would think any less of them. The only movement comes in the form of the exaggerated eye rolls the middle school set practices like a religion.

“… there's a scratching sound coming from somewhere down the hall,” Sam is saying. He’s a kid again, animated and earnest. “Kate wraps her blankets tighter around herself and squeezes her eyes shut. Maybe if the ghost thinks she's sleeping it won't bother her. Her dog won't leave her side, and licks her hand to comfort her.”

Dean almost can’t believe Sam is telling this one, not with his near-pathological love of dogs, though given his penchant for horrific jokes, he can't be too surprised. It was one that Ellen permanently banned a regular for telling them, swearing that it would scar them for life even though they’d held back shocked laughter at the punch line, if you could call it that.

The rain drizzling outside lends an authenticity that he can’t decide whether is atmospheric or just plain creepy. He looks to his left, hoping to see if Kevin has formed an opinion on the matter so that he can take the opposing side. Dean hasn't trusted his judgment since he admitted to _liking_ Jar Jar. He's engrossed despite having no doubt heard it before— a bad sign. Creepy it is, Dean decides, though he tells himself he's shivering because of the breeze filtering through his damp shirt.

The only listeners paying less attention than him are huddled together a few rows up: a blonde and a redhead, with a brunette in the middle, all of whom failed to save him a seat. Jesus, being around middle schoolers is really wearing off on all of them.

Jo’s expression is hard to read in 3/4 profile, but he recognizes the inquisitive tilt of her head. Cas glances around, finding the spot where Dean is hunkered, his expression colder and emptier than the void. He shakes his head. Charlie lays a hand on his shoulder and looks up at him, ponytail flickering with the force of whatever she's saying, while Jo’s gaze ticks between his face and Dean's.

Could they make it any more obvious what they're talking about? So yeah, Cas is pretty much done with him. No need to rub it in. Jo doesn't even have the decency to look sorry when he shoots her an incredulous look. She sends one right back.

That's it. He did his job. He doesn't have to stay for the rest. If anyone wants to follow him out into the rain, fine. If not, even better.

***

“I could be there in 20 minutes, a couple whiskeys in in thirty. In two hours I won’t have a shit left to give about any of this. What’s stopping me? What’s the point of stopping me?” He’s been clutching the phone so hard for so long that he thinks his hand might grow around the receiver. He tells Jody everything, all jumbled up and in the wrong order, but it’s all there. Putting his big idiot foot in his big idiot mouth, multiple times. Sam and Jo’s fling jokes and it occurs to him to wonder why Cas was so prepared— he was obviously planning to have sex with someone. Did it even matter who, or was Dean just the most convenient orifice?

Charlie barges in then, calling out, “Sam? Have you seen— oh!” She starts when she realizes which Winchester is behind the desk, taking in his distress.

She rushes to apologize but he cuts her off with a snarled “Out!” and a hand whipped toward the door. He waits for her to get over her shock and obey before continuing his rant.

And even if Cas ever had wanted to actually be with him, Oregon is so far away, another planet, and Sammy wants him to move to Texas, and that’s the other end of the galaxy. And Charlie told him he couldn’t avoid his problems and he tried to anyway and oh yeah that blew up in his face— not in the fun way. His cheeks are pulling down in the beginning of dry sobs, and his chest is seizing so hard that he can’t breathe. All he wants to do is knock back whiskey until he swims in it, until he floats away into dark, still waters.

The line fills with a pensive silence, and Dean uses the time to walk his feet up Sam’s desk drawers to brace them against the edge of the cluttered top, his forehead falling to his knee.

Then Jody sighs. “I’m not gonna tell you what to do, if that’s what you’re after. What I am gonna say is that you owe yourself better than that. ‘Cause when the hangover’s gone you’re gonna be right back where you started.”

“He walked away, Jody. Everyone always leaves, and that’s not gonna change. I’m always gonna end up where I started.”

There’s shuffling on the other side of the door, and his head snaps up when he hears the sorry excuse for a whisper that he would recognize on any continent, in any language— hell, on any plane of _existence_. Cas is standing just inside the doorway, looking helpless. Charlie backs out the door, and her mouth says, "Talk," while her eyes call them both fucking idiots.

Cas gapes at him. Dean looks back, unable to form thoughts beyond _Cas_ and _here_ and _why_.

Jody’s voice is tinny and distant as she asks if he’s still there, if he wants her to come down.

Cas drops his eyes as if he’s just realized he was staring and makes several aborted efforts to speak. Finally he gives Dean a long, accusing look, then walks out.

Jody’s still on the phone asking if Dean’s there. He promises to call her back, and that he’ll be sober when he does. Then he goes after Cas, to the only place he could be.

By now Dean knows these paths, knows them well enough to stomp through the woods, blind with anger, batting away branches more forcefully than necessary. He kicks everything he might've tripped over a few weeks ago.

He stops at the treeline. Cas is slung across their chairs, his legs a roadblock. Dean isn’t welcome here.

"You're actually a terribly inconvenient orifice. If that was what I wanted from you I would've been better off doing it myself." Cas speaks to his crossed ankles without looking up. He must’ve heard Dean crashing through the trees.

“So you’re having Charlie eavesdrop for you now? First you barely acknowledge me for days and then you listen in on a private phone call?”

Cas ignores the accusation. They both know it's false.

“Why do you care if I walk away when you're the one pushing me?"

Dean must have heard wrong. All he's ever done is try to get closer, damn near cling to Cas like life support.

"No. You don't get to say that I don’t care, not when you _literally_ pushed me away and turned your back."

“You think I don’t care about you?” Cas surges out of his chair, kicking the other over in the process, but doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself now that he’s vertical. He stands stock still except for the labored rise and fall of his shoulders. "You were everything they made you out to be— generous and perceptive and unreasonably hard on yourself. And we got close, and it was comfortable and exhilarating all at once, but then you start talking about how it’ll be over soon.”

That wasn't what Dean meant at all. He was trying to say that didn’t want to lose Cas, that he couldn’t believe they would have to give up what they had here, even a little bit of it. It just didn’t come out right, and then he was too wounded to fix it. He opens his mouth to argue that point, but Cas barrels on.

“You showed up here on two days' notice with a tan line obviously from a ring, you talk about a kid that might’ve been yours. You’re obviously not over them. What did you expect me to think? That this isn’t some kind of a rebound?”

That woman and kid were his family for a year— he wasn't just going to forget that, no matter how hard he tried.

Dean looks over his crossed arms to where he’s made a divot in the grass with the toe of his boot. “Cas, if this was a rebound I would’ve fucked first and asked questions later.”

"So what's it called when you avoid asking at all?"

Dean doesn't know.

Beats. They stare at each other. Cas's expression the first thing Dean has ever felt justified calling morose.

“I think I was falling in love with you,” Cas says, his voice quiet and hard.

Was.

“So was I.” Dean wants to curse at how broken it comes out.

Was.

 

 

Cas flops back down into his chair, draping his limbs over the frame like wrung-out rags. Dean approaches with caution and takes his time righting the chair he’s come to think of as his so that he can sit facing Cas.

"I didn’t want to,” he confesses. “It was too soon and I was too messed up. I’m still so messed up."

Cas looks at him, forehead rumpled above hound dog eyes.

"Don’t,” Dean says. “Don’t you dare pity me."

Cas rolls his eyes, his tone feral. "It's not pity, Dean. Everyone is messed up in some way. You're not special in that regard."

Silence. Dean traces the stitching of his boots with his eyes.

"Do you remember how I told you about Crowley?"

Dean nods, wary.

"He wanted me to stay, forget about going back to school and just..." His nostrils flare into a sneer. "He said either things would get serious or it would be my fault it ended."

Dean can't handle the implications of that. He gets up, brushing imaginary dirt off his pants.

"Yeah, well. Now that we’ve swapped sob stories, time to end this pity party."

"It’s not a _sob story_. I’m not trying to manipulate you. I know how shitty that is. I’m trying to explain, to share something with you, and you’re being purposely obtuse."

Cas’s fingers lock around Dean's wrist as he stalks past, and it must wrench his arm to a painful angle, but he squeezes tighter. Dean stops only to avoid tipping him onto the ground.

"When you said ‘two weeks left,’ I thought you meant that we would be over. Last call on our r— whatever it is. I didn’t want to be this pathetic thing clutching onto your legs as you tried to walk away." He abruptly releases Dean's wrist, like he’s realized that's essentially what he's doing.

No wonder he started disappearing all the time. Dean can't walk away with that confession hanging in the air. He braces himself on the back of Cas's chair, relieved that he doesn't pull away from the brush of fingertips against his shoulders.

"It didn't occur to you that I might cling right back?"

Cotton catches against his fingers as Cas hunches forward. "I didn’t think you’d want to, with the distance… physical intimacy... "

"Cas, I don’t care about that. I told you. I told you the first time I kissed you I wasn’t there for that."

"The raging hard-on wasn’t very convincing."

"It was secondary. "

"Neither was your... enthusiasm for it the past few days."

Dean doesn’t have a good explanation for that.

"I don’t want to be your Crowley," Cas says. "I don’t want to ask of you more than you’re willing to give."

There's a second pair of lungs in his chest filling with everything it's too late to say. He would solder himself to Cas's side if he could— Cas who keeps bees and teaches kids science and has wings tattooed across his back. Cas who smells like heaven and hogs the hot water, who fucked him boneless in a twin bed. Cas with the thousand-watt eyes. He wants all that comes after you let yourself fall, and he’d give anything for it.

"What would you... ask of me?" He parrots Cas's words, and they don't quite fit in his mouth.

Cas responds with bare honesty. "Everything, but that would be greedy."

A leaden, retroactive joy sinks through him.

"I would've given it." Dean moves to wrap his arms around Cas’s chest, but Cas won't lean into him.

He shakes his head. "It's not fixed, Dean. That's not how it works."

Was. _Would have_. This isn't how it was supposed to go.

***

Dean takes a long, luxurious shower the next morning, cursing when he lathers his hair with Cas's shampoo purely out of habit. He washes twice with his own, not minding that it delays his coming downstairs.

When he finally slogs into the kitchen, Cas's coffee cup and its signature treacle-sweet scent greet him like yesterday's fallout never happened. A peace offering? Unlikely. Habit, like Dean with the shampoo? Possibly. He could drink it, but that'd be creepy, considering the circumstances.

Fuck the circumstances.

The impulse to throw the mug washes over him, and the muscles in his arm tense in preparation before he thinks better of it. He'd rather not leave physical evidence that it bothered him. Instead he rinses it out and sets it gently on top of the unrinsed dishes already in the sink. He's not doing them. They can sit there the whole day for all he cares.

He pours his own cup of coffee, black, and heads toward the mess and most likely a scolding from Jo for his lateness.

She raises a brow and throws an apron at his head, but otherwise doesn't comment.

In between stirring homefries, Dean peeks through the serving counter window as cabins start filing in, half-worried, half-hopeful that Cas is going to show up despite the sink full of dishes back at the house.

"So did you and loverboy talk things out?" Jo gives him a probing look.

"You could say that." It comes out in a wheeze.

"What's your major malfunction?”

"He— It— Uh, no." He falters and his face begs to not have to say it.

She stares at him, interpreting the look more easily than his jumbled attempt at an explanation. Dean can practically read the questions through her forehead— _What happened?_ and _Are you okay?_ and _Which one of you do I need to punch?_

"Don't bother, Jo. Can you just... talk to me? About anything, I don't care. Just distract me."

He turns his best pleading look on her, the one that convinced her to cover for him over countless nights of sneaking out to do all manner of things he shouldn’t have. She returns the nod that promises she has his back.

"Well, I got into culinary school. Starts in September, so I have some time to decide if I'm really going."

"Way to keep a guy informed, jeez. You have to go."

"You're the first person I've told. I mean, I want to learn everything I can. But my mom can cook anything, and she never had to go to some fancy school to learn it. She just did."

"Yeah, but you've been saving for years for this, building experience. Ellen’s gonna be thrilled..."

Jo grabs his face, turning his gaze away from where it had drifted to the nearly full tables. He didn't realize he was looking.

"Sorry."

"Just come out and talk and eat with me and don't even turn your head. Okay?"

He's not sure what would be worse, sitting next to an empty chair or one that might as well be. He can't go out there, not even after she comes in with the all-clear.

She loads up two plates with eggs and potatoes and more ketchup than he's had in years.

"Comfort food. You need it."

"It's no tomato rice soup," he says.

"You better eat it before I change my mind about keeping you company."

"Thanks, Jo. For the food and the company."

She nods. "Are you gonna hide in here all day?"

He hasn't thought that far yet. He was just hoping to make it through breakfast.

"What if he’s looking for you?”

“He won’t be.” Even if he were, nothing good would come of it. Maybe embarrassment and a phantom rake to the gut.

Jo sighs, and hops up onto the counter. “Lucky for you, I have nowhere else to be.”

***

Confessions of almost-love notwithstanding, their avoidance of each other is the most in sync they've been since they christened Cas's car. Now that he’s thinking about it, if he had known it would be the last time, Dean would’ve been more thorough. The most contact he has with Cas now is through dumping his long-cooled cups of coffee and stacking them on top of the dishes in the sink.

Breakfast proves safe two days running, and today Dean makes it out of the kitchen. Sam claps him on the shoulder across the expanse of Cas's empty seat but otherwise doesn't comment. He and Missouri are busy arguing about something that doesn’t affect Dean, and Jo seems to be making mental bets with herself over the outcome. Dean can’t bring himself to join her. The gap next to him is an itch in a phantom limb. It gnaws at him, and there isn't a damn thing he can do about it. He tears at a piece of French toast with his fork until the others are done.

That evening he makes more headway in the Asimov than he did in the previous two weeks. Soon he's holding it the nerd way purely out of necessity, two hands and everything. He imagines the fond, pleased smile Cas would grant him if things were different and huffs bitterly. If things were different, if he'd said everything he was feeling— or any of it— he wouldn't be holed up here alone getting all misty over holding a book. He'd be downstairs with what’s left of his family, and with Cas tucked up next to him if he was lucky. He misses him. He's right downstairs and Dean misses him.

The realization chases him further into the pages. If he keeps this up he'll be able to finish it and subtly return it before Cas feels the need to come fetch it. Or maybe he wouldn't, would rather let it disappear than risk interaction.

A soft ratatat against his door. Sam’s knock. He sighs and drapes the book over his thigh.

“Come in.”

Sam pokes his nose around the door and creeps in like it’s a goddamn ICU. He’s holding a paper towel wrapped sandwich.

“You weren’t at dinner again,” he says, concern leaking into his voice. He hovers near Dean’s nightstand. “I made you a PB&B.”

“That’s your favorite. Still getting the hang of the whole ‘comforting’ thing aren’t you?”

“Well, I can’t make yours, so mine’ll have to do. Even if I could, Jo wouldn’t let me. She stared me down the whole time I was making this, so you’re lucky you’re getting it at all.”

Dean first started making these for him back when he was too young to use the stove. Sam apparently never progressed past that point.

“I ate in the kitchen.”

“Well in that case,” Sam tears it in two, careful not to spill its peanut-butter-banana guts on the floor. He bites his portion in half, offering the other to Dean with raised eyebrows.

Dean wonders if that’s Sam’s subtle way of calling bullshit.

“I really did eat.”

“Just let me brother you, ok?”

An extra half sandwich won’t kill him, and he really does like PB&B, though they’re better fried. Maybe someday he’ll teach Sam how—

There’s honey in it. There is honey mixed in with the the banana and peanut butter, and he has a pretty good idea of where it came from. Its sweetness clings to his tongue even after he swallows, and he savors that last traces of it.

Sam clears his throat and nods to the book forgotten in Dean’s lap. “Good book?”

“It’s passing the time.” Nothing like sci-fi to help you escape reality for a while.

“That’s all?”

Dean shrugs. It’s not like he has better things to do.

“Want some company? Or you could come downstairs?” Sam suggests. “I just hate the thought of you moping up here.”

Dean would love to go downstairs. At that moment there’s nothing he wants more, but to actually do it would be a shade of pathetic he’s not ready to turn yet.

“It’s uh… It’s Cas’s.” he admits, tapping the cover. “I kind of want to finish it before… “

He doesn’t need to go on. Sam gets a pained look and twists the paper towel in his hands.

“Right, yeah. I’ll leave you to it, then, I guess.” He starts to leave but turns back. “If you change your mind about the company, text me. Or… drop something heavy, whatever. Ok?”

“How about I drop you?” Dean threatens, with more bite than he feels.

“Got it. Leaving.” Sam holds his hands up in surrender and backs out.

Dean turns back to his book, running his tongue along the roof of his mouth, tasting honey. He’s suddenly hyper aware that his absence downstairs hasn't gone unnoticed, hyper aware that he is, in fact, moping.

***

It’s Jo who crashes his solitude the next day.

“You know, you don’t have to keep hiding in here. I can tell you exactly where not to go to preserve your delicate constitution.”

So what if he’s been eating lunch and dinner in the kitchen? There’t no law against it. He flashes her a view of half-chewed dinner to prove just how delicate he is.

“Yeah, point taken, Princess. Let’s just say that a certain… _staff member_ … has developed an unfortunate case of swimmer’s itch.”

He gives her a dead-eyed stare. “Thank you for your discretion, Jo, but I think a flashing neon sign would’ve been subtler. Anyway, a _certain staff member_ should know better, and if you’re trying to get me to, I don’t know, scratch him where he itches, it ain’t gonna happen.”

“Ok first, _gross_. No. That was creative license, but I was hoping to at least make you laugh at his misfortune.”

That’s… actually kind of sweet, in a fucked up way.

“What’s the uncreative version?”

“Well, he’s now beaten at least four campers in swimming races, has— I think— pledged to serve on Charlie’s court, and last night he left a huge wet spot on my side of the couch.”

Dean has to laugh at that even as he tries not to picture Cas in a tunic and breeches, or with the tan that he knows must be evening out. He does allow himself to wonder what the kids think of his tattoos.

“At least he’s been productive,” he shrugs. “That’s more than I can say for you. You’re a regular gossip rag.”

“It’s still wet,” Jo complains through clenched teeth. “I just want this to end.”

Dean claps her on the shoulder. “Cheer up, chap. Only a few more days.” _For both of us_ , he neglects to add.

He shoos Jo out of the kitchen and cleans up alone, masochistically running over and over how wrong things are. How stubborn he’d been refusing to just talk. How stubborn Cas is _being_ , refusing to let things just be okay since they did talk.

When he gets inside he heads straight for the stairs, ignoring the dark messy hair that sticks up over the back of the couch next to Jo’s luminous blonde. Trying to ignore it. How can Cas just sit there and let Jo have his spot on the couch— the spot where Dean poured his heart out to him, where they spent hours upon hours wrapped up in each other— like none of it meant anything to him? The rational part of his brain reminds him that Jo probably forced him, but the emotional part screams for it to _fuck very far off_.

He stomps upstairs and buries his nose in the Asimov, and it's almost like being in his beach chair with Cas and the bees, except for how it's not. There's no calming rush of leaves, no bees zooming purposefully in and out, and most importantly no Cas— no warmth at his side, no tympanic rumble in his chest.

Dean snaps the book shut, fed up with sitting upstairs alone all night like he’s on fucking time out, even more than with walking past everyone gathered in the living room like one big happy family. Of course, he could just go in and sit down, like Sam suggested, but he also can’t. Because then he’d be in the same space as Cas, and he’d have to intentionally ignore him instead of never seeing him in the first place. There's no way he can just walk in and plop down in the armchair, or worse, onto the floor in front of the couch. Might as well tattoo _pathetic_ across his forehead.

It's so much worse than the coffee left on the counter. At least that doesn’t come with witnesses. He decides he doesn’t want to be here in the morning to deal with that, either, and runs upstairs just to grab his keys and wallet and a change of clothes. Maybe he can get a discount at this inn that Sam has a deal with if they see him in a staff t-shirt.

Charlie had scribbled the street name on a napkin when they’d made their loose-but-definite plans, and he finds it crammed into the billfold of his wallet. _Big white sign, old-timey post lamps— can’t miss it_ , she’d promised.

She was wrong. He drives the entire length of the street, and the only business with a white sign has lanterns strung under the eaves, and it’s a bar.

He pulls in and parks, just to get his bearings. Maybe he misread the napkin? He checks again. No. He doesn’t even know the name of the place he’s looking for.

Sighing, he wonders if it’s too tidy for a physical sign to also be a cosmic one, nevermind that he doesn’t quite believe in them. He wasn’t planning to go home tonight anyway, and here’s a way to make that happen. If he goes in, he’ll either end up leaving with someone or sleeping it off in the Impala.

His phone buzzes, and he squints at the screen. A text from Sam: _if i don’t hear from you in 30 mins i’m sending a search party_.

He drops the phone into his lap and steeples his fingers on the wheel, letting his head fall back against the seat. This is exactly what Jody warned him against, what— four days ago?

An engine hums in next to him and cuts off, and then there’s a knock at his passenger window. He waves a hand at the busybody.

“I’m fine, go away.”

The door opens before he can protest, and a familiar voice fills the car.

“If you’re so fine, why the hell are you looking passed out in a bar parking lot? You never called me back, by the way.”

Fuck. Jody. _Fuck_.

“Think of the devil and she shall appear,” he mumbles mostly to himself, but she hears and seems to take it as a compliment.

“Now, hon, I’m not so powerful as all that. Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

The phone vibrates again, and another message flashes across the screen: _i lied. Search party’s already on her way_

He quickly swipes back _no shit_.

“I am sitting in my car in a bar parking lot looking passed out. What's going on with you?”

She’s not impressed by his wit and pins him with that look that says _Tell the truth, young man._ He sighs.

“I was looking for the inn, couldn’t find it, so I pulled in here. Sign was white, lights were on, seemed like as good a reason as any.”

“The inn, huh.” Her eyes interrogate the dash.

“I didn’t want to be at home tonight.” It’s not really home, but that’s the best word he can come up with for it.

“So it would’ve been bad news,” she concludes. “I wish things had turned out better for you, I really do. You seemed really happy.”

He doesn’t need to confirm it.

“You know you can still call me, when you leave here. Wherever you go. I might not be able to come fetch your ass, but my ears are pretty good.”

“Texas.”

The decision forms along with the shape of the word. Sam is all he has left, really. He's his family now. What was it Dad used to say when they fought and he was sober enough to notice? _When I'm gone you'll be glad to have each other?_ He was right, in a way, even though it took some time for them to figure it out. And not as a last resort, either. Sam has always tried to be there for him, even when Dean wouldn't let him. It's about time he did.

“Sam lives there, but I’ve never been.”

“And you'll take care of yourself there, go to meetings and all that? ” she prods.

He hesitates.

“You’re not done, Dean. You might knock it down, but you can't ever knock it out. Your brother’s place is like a sanctuary, hardly any temptation. It’s not gonna be like that forever.”

“I just hate all the feelings and bullshit.”

“No shock, considering that’s all you are— feelings with a load of bullshit piled on top.”

He gives her a sidelong glare.

"Cut the bullshit, Dean. You're better without it."

"I don't know how."

"Yes you do. I've seen it. The way you talk about your family, about Cas— if you were half as honest with him, with all of them, as you are with me we wouldn't be here right now."

Dean turns on the radio just for something to do with his hands.

"I was honest with Cas, and he rejected me. 'No Dean, it's not fixed.'" Whether he's mocking Cas or himself is anyone's guess.

"He didn't say it was over, either," Jody says delicately.

He stops fiddling with the controls and stares at her, stone-faced. "I was there, I think I'd know."

"Think on it some more. I'm sure he just needs some space. In the meantime, maybe you should make sure he knows you care."


	18. Chapter 18

Dean wants to throw his phone when it shrieks its alarm tone. His head and neck ache, like they would if he actually had slept in the car. He spends an extra ten minutes in the shower, letting the hot water beat the tension out of his muscles while his mind hovers in that sleepy realm that usually only exists in the five minutes after he hits snooze. It’s at times like these, not awake enough to censor his thoughts before they’re fully formed, that he’s the most honest with himself. Jody was right last night. He can’t keep hiding from the people he cares about. The realization sends a jolt of nerves down his spine, and all at once the water is scalding. He cranks it off and steps out into a cloud of steam.

He barely touches his towel, eager to escape to somewhere he can breathe, and wrestles his clothing over wet skin. Dean pauses with his jeans bunched around his knees, listening to Sam and Jo’s voices coming toward the bathroom, the wrong direction for this time of day. He could have sworn he heard his name over the rustle of denim, but neither of them is calling for him. They stop nearby, hushed in the morning quiet. This time he picks out Jody’s name. He rushes to pull his jeans up the rest of the way, buttoning them with one hand as he swings the door open.

“Don’t mind me,” he says pushing between them. Jo gets the hint, retreating to her own room. Sam must see it as an invitation, as he follows Dean to his room and plops onto the bed without asking permission.

“So, did you?” he asks, his face turned toward the door but watching Dean out of the corner of his eye. Unfounded guilt burns behind Dean’s ears, and he throws his bundled clothing on top of the dresser.

“Did I what?” Dean plays the cryptic game right back, immediately breaking the promise he made to himself not five minutes ago. It’s just too early for this.

“Don’t make me say it. Jody found you last night.” Sam does the concerned brother a little too well, and Dean thinks if he knit his brow any tighter it’d turn into a hat. “So?”

Dean digs through a drawer for a new shirt, though there’s a clean one in the pile on top of the dresser, and pulls it over his head.

If Sam knows Jody found him last night, he shouldn’t even bother to ask. He knows she wouldn’t bring Baby back if she’d found Dean drinking, and sure as hell wouldn’t let him drive home. He wouldn’t have tried in the first place, but that’s beside the point. If Sam would just turn his head he’d be able to see the damn car out the window. He isn’t a mind reader, though, and mentally shouting at him is only going to bring the headache back.

He taps a jagged rhythm on particleboard. _Cut the bullshit_. “No, I didn’t. I thought about it.”

Sam relaxes and falls back onto the bed with a _whoosh_ of air.

“Hey. Mi casa is not su casa.”

“The whole place is mi casa,” Sam reminds him, not moving an inch.

Speaking of Sam's casa, now seems like as good a time as any to bring it up.

“Look, Sammy, I’m sorry. I promised you I’d be better than him, and I turned out just like him. But you can’t be my babysitter, especially not if I’m gonna be crashing with you.

Sam jerks upright. “You are? Since when? And I thought you couldn’t talk to me.”

Dean shrugs, idly straightening a drawer of folded t-shirts. “Jody and I had a good talk last night, and I’m trying it out. The whole talking thing.”

Silence.

“You didn’t,” Sam blurts. “Turn out like Dad, I mean.”

“I abandoned you.”

“I abandoned you first. I left you alone with him.”

Dean wants to argue, to say that he could have left any time he wanted, even though they both know better. He couldn’t do that to Dad, not when Dad needed him, not when he was old enough to help out. He probably never would have left if the man hadn’t died.

“It’s not a competition, college boy.”

Sam grimaces. “I thought about coming back, after he died. Figured you could use a brother. And when Ash died, but you weren’t there.”

Dean starts to apologize all over again, but Sam cuts him off.

“I’m over it. You had your own shit to deal with, you didn’t need mine, too.”

“It’s a miracle you turned out so well-adjusted.”

“I’m not. I resented you, both of you, for a long time.”

“You sure you still don’t? Shit like that tends to hang around. I don’t want to wake up on another couch with all my bags packed.”

“That’s amateur. If I was gonna kick you out, you’d wake up in the car,” Sam jokes.

Dean rolls his eyes. “Funny.”

“It didn’t do any of us any good,” Sam shrugs, serious now, “Just kept me from reaching out.”

Reaching out’s a two-way street.

“You did, though. That’s more than I can say.”

“I wanted my brother back. I miss how it used to be.”

Dean stares at a whorl in the floor to spare himself the trademark Sam Winchester puppy eyes. “Me too. I just didn’t realize it until I came here.”

***

“I haven’t said anything about how you’ve been awol,” Sam says two days later, setting his breakfast dishes in the wrong sink. Dean doesn’t argue, though he’s pretty sure saying that he hasn’t said anything counts as saying something. “I mean I don’t blame you, but… anyway will you please come out for the picture? You can go back to hiding as soon as we’re done. I just… I want you there. Jo does too. I know we got one a few weeks ago, but we don’t have enough family pictures.”

God damn Sammy for always knowing how to get to him. There’s no way he could say no to that.

Sam smiles like he knew he’d win even before he started talking. “Great. We’re gonna do it right after breakfast. Just follow the crowd, ok?”

That’s not something he ever imagined coming from his brother’s mouth.

Dean picks at the rest of his meal— alone in the kitchen— until dishes stop appearing, then follows the last stragglers out onto the lawn.

He’s the very last one to arrive, and Jo waves him over to where she stands in the back row. She reels him in with a reassuring smile, one he saw every time his dad called with bad news and from the sidelines of every wrestling match. It helps as much now as it ever did— not at all— but he appreciates the effort.

Dean assumes the flash of red and plaid in his peripheral vision means Charlie’s there too, but Cas draws his attention like a flare. Sun-bronzed and wearing the shirt Dean’s come to terms with having lost forever, his entire appearance seems curated for maximum contrast with his eyes. It’s not fucking fair.

No one says anything as Sam fiddles for fucking ever with a tripod and a digital camera Dean can’t believe still functions. He probably only pulls it out twice a year to take these dumb photos. By now he should be able to afford to have them professionally done, but that would probably ruin the whole home-grown vibe the place has got going on.

Finally Sam drags the tripod back far enough to fit everyone into the frame and calls for their attention. Dean automatically wraps an arm around Jo’s shoulders. So does Cas, his arm landing right on top of Dean’s. He jumps at the sensation of warm, familiar skin over rounded muscles and an incongruously sharp elbow.

Dean looks over, noticing how the sleeve of Cas’s— _Dean’s_ — shirt bunches up over his raised shoulder, and there’s a tan where it was pale before.

Cas doesn’t seem to notice their position, however, at least not until Dean makes an unsure noise and shifts. His arm shoots up, and he looks almost offended, like Dean personally attacked him by pointing it out.

Dean starts to slip his own arm off of Jo, but she’s not having any of it and snaps, “Whatever unresolved bullshit you two have between you, I don’t care. You can put it away for the two minutes it takes to get a damn photo. And look happy about it.”

Charlie has the sense not to admonish her about impressionable ears.

They compromise, Dean’s arm across her shoulders and Cas’s around her waist as Sam calls out for everyone to _stay exactly still._ By some combination of longing and proximity, Jo is squeezed between them tight enough that Cas’s fingers brush Dean’s side, and Dean’s knuckles butt up against his shoulder. It’s enough to give Dean a genuinely sad smile to show to the camera as Sam tacks onto his other side.

Sam said he could go back to hiding right after the picture, and that’s exactly what he intends to do. He still has Cas’s book, and he wants to return it while Cas is busy helping the campers check out.

Dean lets himself into Cas’s room, for once grateful that there are no locks in the house. (He’s pretty sure Sam would kill him if he broke the door to return a book.) It’s bare. The only thing keeping it from having that just-vacated air is the large square suitcase standing next to the bed, keys on top, and the cell phone charging on the nightstand. He must be in a hurry to leave.

Leave. Keys. _Shit_. He meant to give the Continental a once-over before Cas left for Oregon. He can make good on that promise, even if Cas has no idea he made it.

A sense of calm comes over him as he gives the Continental a once— okay, twice— over. The familiar motions of car maintenance soothe him and make him feel like he's working toward something, even if that thing is only making sure Cas gets home safe.

There isn’t much he can do with just what he keeps in the Impala, but he checks the tires, makes sure the wipers and all the external lights work and that there are no internal warning lights. He finds Cas’s lack of emergency kit alarming and transfers his own to the Continental’s trunk. He and Sam can pick up a new one on their way south.

Then he pops the hood to check for damage to the hoses and belts— he hates the thought of Cas stranded on the side of the road, even though he knows he’s a grown-ass man— and finally the fluid levels.

Footsteps crunch behind him and stop a few feet to his right as he leans over to tighten a cap. Feeling caught, he risks a sideways glance. Scuffed sneakers and faded jeans. Cas.

Could he stay under here long enough for Cas to get tired of waiting? He seems fairly settled, leaning against the Impala, and Dean’s back will probably give out before Cas’s patience. He straightens with a sigh and closes the hood, bracing himself on his palms. Then he turns his head to stare back at Cas.

His crossed arms and suspicious squint are a wall between them, and he sounds exhausted when he asks, “What are you doing, Dean?”

Dean thought it was obvious.

He pulls the keys out of his pocket and offers them to Cas. The cars are closer together than he realized, and he keeps his voice soft.

“Drive safe. Stop when you get tired. Call when you get there. It doesn't have to be me, but, uh, I'm kinda hoping it will be.”

When Cas doesn’t lift his hand to take his keys, Dean tosses them onto the driver’s seat through the open window and turns to head back inside. Cas grabs his arm as he swings around and squints at him. Dean stares back.

“Why?” His voice breaks off, but his face finishes the question a dozen ways— the crease in his brow wanting to know why _this,_ why _now_ , the parted lips why Dean cares, his narrowed eyes why he should trust him.

Dean leans next to him on the Impala.

“You know why.”

A pause. Cas lets a long breath out into the silence.

Dean tries again. “I don’t know if you’re ready to talk, but I am.”

“We talked,” Cas says.

“No, we fought. I mean really talk.” Dean’s stomach writhes as he says it, but he pushes on. “I want to fix this.”

Cas crosses his arms and stares down at them. “I don’t know if I can trust you. You weren’t honest with me.”

Dean knows he lost whatever trust Cas had in him before this all went to hell, but it still hurts to hear him say it. “I know. I’m working on it.”

He stares until Cas looks back at him and holds his gaze. Finally Cas nods and leans over a few degrees, just enough to tip some of his weight into Dean’s shoulder. Relief rushes through him, and he leans back into Cas. He aches to wrap an arm around him and pull him tight against his side, but he knows better. This is what Cas will give him. This is enough.


	19. Epilogue

They switched off driving several hours ago at what felt like the Gas-N-Sip at the end of the universe, everything turning brown and browner since they’d left it.

Sam whined when Dean insisted on a road trip, though he should’ve expected it. No way in hell was Dean going to fly, and anyway, he had to get his Baby to her new home somehow. Sam was supposed to be serving as navigator, but the radio stations around here all seem to be obsessed with The Eagles, which put him straight to sleep, head lolling against the window.

Dean has been, for all intents and purposes, alone with his thoughts.

It hasn't quite registered yet that he's really doing this, heading to a new city to start fresh for the second time in as many months. He left Sioux Falls with several new numbers in his phone and strict orders to keep in touch, but Charlie and Jo and Kevin are on their own road trips. Cas, though, should be home by now (as much as he hates to call Oregon Cas's home). Still the phones are silent, especially his, which he’s had resting on his thigh since he got back in the driver's seat, and it's killing him.

He keeps one hand on it as he drives, willing it to ring. The first electronic syllable makes him jump without fail each time the confident female voice pipes up over the soft rock from Baby's speakers.

A food and lodging sign flashes by on the right, reminding him that they’ll need to refuel soon and switch places for what Sam called ‘the tricky part’, though he's only driven it twice himself. Dean suspects that for all his complaining about feeling like origami after spending even two hours cooped up in a car, he wants Amelia to see him in the driver’s seat when the Impala rolls up to their building.

Noise bursts from his phone, and it barely registers before he's willing his greyhound heart to stop chasing decoys. But instead of the “follow I-27 S” he was expecting, the opening bars of his ringtone fill the car. At that he lets his pulse sprint away, taking some of his breath with it.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Dean.” Cas says, and it sounds like he's smiling.

Dean glances down at Sam’s phone, dark and silent on the seat between them. No alerts, no missed calls. Hope swells in his chest, grounding him, and he manages a deep breath.

He hurries to pull over, and the car shudders over the gravel shoulder. Sam jerks awake, looking wildly around for whatever crisis forced them off the road. Comprehension settles over his face when Dean gestures to the phone, mouthing _Cas_ , and he relaxes against the window.

“Dean? Are you there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm here. Just had to pull over.”

He gets out on shaky legs and leans against the Impala, letting her warmth soak through him. When he speaks again he can't keep the relief from his voice, doesn't even want to.

“Hey, Cas.”

It’s not fixed, not even close, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be.


End file.
